


The Greatest Show Unearthed

by Colourblindzebra (Shocotate)



Category: Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Genre: Gen, Halloween, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-16 08:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shocotate/pseuds/Colourblindzebra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a wonderful Halloween night, there’s a new game in the arcade, it’s having a party, and the whole of Sugar Rush is invited! What could go possibly wrong with over a dozen kids let loose in a haunted carnival?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Iowa, CarnEvil returns for YOU

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Phew, exams are over now finally, so I'm gonna try and get into writing fics again (or maybe just writing completely since I'll need to be doing a lot of it in University). This fic is a 'sequel' kinda thing to The Baron's Fool, where King Candy takes up Umlaut on his inviation to go to CarnEvil's Halloween party (writing this kinda fic in the middle of summer what, I know), and brings along the racers of Sugar Rush too. You don't need to read that fic oneshot to understand this one, but it'll help a little context wise.
> 
> Now, for a little context in general here, as I am writing about what feels like the superest of obscure arcade games ever. This fic is a crossover between Sugar Rush, obviously, and CarneEvil, the light gun game released by Midway (the American company who made Mortal Kombat and Tapper, oh and Satan's Hollow, where 'Saitine' is from) at the end of October 1998 (ninjaing House of the Dead 2), and as you'd expect of the 90s light gun game times, it's violent and bloody as all hell. It terrorized my childhood from the minute I laid eyes on it in the arcades at the tender age of 4 in the summer of 1999, on my very first holiday. I was too small to actually see the screen, but due to my bad luck I chose to play in the play area that went about 8 foot high, so I saw everything. Why they decided to place the cabinet facing the children's play area I'll never know, maybe they just wanted to mess us all up inside. Long story short, I ended up seeing it every year from then on and finally in 2008 I mustered up the courage to play it, only to find out that the coin dispencer was busted. I complain, they say ok, I come back in 2009, game is gone, and I know it's my fault. Still, now I can appreciate its twistedness, and it is really unique, and a lot of fun. So, to fill the void of never facing my fear (playing it on MAME for research writing this fic doesn't count), I've decided to write about it instead. There we go.
> 
> Fic cover belongs to the awesome TheCreatorsEye on DeviantART, seriously check her out she's amazing.
> 
> The fic's title comes from CarnEvil's tagline on its flyers.

  
 

 

**October 31st 1998**

If he was _really_ honest with himself, it might have been better this way. It was still relatively early days in his ruling of Sugar Rush, making sure he was a good ruler was still very important, and being a good ruler meant sometimes appeasing his subjects, no matter how immature their wishes, especially when they'd alldemanded. Not to mention he couldn't just lock them _all_ in the Fungeon, once it was finished.

So, without much choice in the matter, King Candy drove out from the Sugar Rush entrance in his kart (carnivals meant bumper cars, which meant the possibility of racing, which was the only consolation King Candy thought he could glean from this 'party'), Sour Bill pottering at his side and the fourteen other racers trailing behind.

It was all Swizzle's fault, that boy never knew to not wander where he shouldn't, learning about things he shouldn't, like Halloween parties, and deciding to tell _everyone_ about it, and then make them all expect _him_ to have already prepared one. Like he'd ever do something like that for a holiday they could have spent all their lives oblivious to. Still, they'd demanded a party, might as well give them the one he'd been offered. That Jester would finally leave him alone, and they'd be happy and loyal and never ask for anything again (unless they managed to find out about Christmas).

"Thanks for letting me and Sticky go to our party. It's gonna be a lot of fun." Swizzle started wandering off in the opposite direction, leading Sticky Wipplesnit along with him, who'd stuck two mint leaf candies to her back, used a stick of sherbet as a wand and called herself the Peppermint Pixie for the night. Swizzle's 'free spirit' meant that he refused to dress up as someone else and not be himself, which Sticky would no doubt find ever so endearing. She was the only one who'd prepared a costume; after all, until a few days ago she and Swizzle were the only ones who even knew about Halloween, until Swizzle's 'passion' and excitement had stopped him from keeping his mouth shut.

"I'm thure it will be, Thwizzle, have a nice time. Come and meet uth once it'th over." The group waved them off, some of them muttering as they watched them go, Taffyta asserting how their party was going to be so much better and something about how she'd put her best makeup on, while Nougetsia gushed about how sweet it was that Swizzle would take Sticky to a party, and Citrusella blew after them with her borrowed vuvuzela.

That small disembodied head carried on floating around his game's entrance as they approached, waiting to see if he would have kept him promise of returning with the answer to his invitation. He'd been ambiguous enough, so there was no need for an explanation for him 'changing his mind'. It seemed he was talking to two teenagers, one in red and one in green, but he couldn't tell what he was saying from this distance. They must have been from his game, but they looked so _normal_ in comparison to the levitating little skull that King Candy had trouble even believing it. Once the pair had wandered away with the curiosity that came with only just being plugged in, Umlaut turned to them and his grin widened.

"Ah, the Racers of Sugar Rush,

here at last.

The party starts soon,

so you'd better be fast."

"Why are you rhyming?" Torvald called from right at the back of the group, and Umlaut had to float up a little higher to see her.

"Rhyming is fun." He teased it, pausing.

"Don't you agre-?"

"No."

King Candy turned around in his seat enough to see Torvald pout and cross her arms.

"…Well, come along to our party

And soon you shall see."

"I think rhymes are fun!" Candlehead waved her hands and jumped up and down so he could see her. There was something seriously amiss with that girl if she somehow hadn't noticed what was wrong with the floating head with too many razor sharp teeth, and was _trying_ to make him notice her. "Nice to meet you, my name's Minty, but-"

" _I'm_ called Minty." Minty Zaki tried to whisper, and failed, making Candlehead flinch.

"…so everyone calls me Candlehead."

"Oh, what a name,

Dear Little Candlehead,

Let's hope you don't wind up

d- _own_ in our Freak Show instead."

Minty Zaki tried to push him away, but didn't dare put her hands too close and settled for mixing into the rest of the group further down, near to Adorabeezle and Snowanna.

"Oh look, the train'th here now." The train pulled in slowly, three fancy looking wooden carriages with their twelve wheels creaking, two a royal blue with gold accents and vertical bars on both sides. The other didn't have any bars, painted a pale yellow with a purple roof and there seemed to be some kind of clowns drawn on the side.

Umlaut ushered the other racers into the blue carriages first, six in each: Taffyta, Rancis, Candlehead, Gloyd, Jubileena and Crumbelina in one, Minty, Adorabeezle, Snowanna, Citrusella, Nougetsia and Torvald (Minty was _not_ happy to be near her remaining recolour) in the other. Rather than trying to squeeze his kart into the tiny door on the carriage, Umlaut unlatched the whole of the side with his teeth, letting it down, and it made a ramp King Candy could drive his kart into. It was a tight fit, and Sour Bill hopped into the small ridge around his seat once the carriage was closed again.

"Are you sure you should bring the kart, Sire?"

"Of courthe I am. While the otherth are enjoying themthelvthes, I will be able to race, and for that I'll need my kart."

"…hmmmk" Sour Bill murmured with a nod as he sat down, the wheels creaking again as the train clattered along into the tunnel. Umlaut floated up to the front of the kart, watching with that smile King Candy doubted would ever properly leave his face.

"Off we go. This is the first time we'll have used the train going back. Isn't it exciting?" Wait a second- that didn't-

"You- you've thtopped rhyming." Umlaut gave him a look, and rolled his eyes so hard he flipped back and did a little somersault in the air, laughing one of his horrible cackles.

"I don't _have_ to rhyme. It's our party too, so we can relax. And clearly some of your _subjects_ didn't like it."

A few minutes later the train had finally reached the station, and the group filed out, into what looked like a forest with a thin dirt path. In true royal fashion King Candy thought it best that he lead the way, driving his kart through the metal gate that read _Greely Valley Cemetery_ , though another banner was trying to cover it up, while dirty brown leaves caught in his tyres.

"We're still setting up. Don't worry; we'll be all ready soon."

"Oh, what's that?" Jubileena pointed to an upturned open top wagon attached to a tractor, tilting her head as she read the sign tied to it. " _'Spooky Sam's Ghost Tour'_? Y-You have g-ghosts here? Are they really scary?"

"Don't be silly, you _can't_ be scared of ghosts. You've seen Clyde before—we all saw him on our way here!" Gloyd shouted, becoming tangled in the senseless amount of Red Vines he'd wrapped around himself as rope 'just in case'.

Umlaut floated up to it, turning upside down to get a better look.

"Huh, oh yeah, that! That's the Good Guys' train; we decided to use _our_ train instead when we set it up today."

"You have good guys here?" Jubileena sounded a little more hopeful.

"Yeah, there's a few, but they're busy exploring the rest of the arcade tonight, so you probably won't see them around." Soon after entering the graveyard they came across a box what looked horribly out of place, but the carnival looked close enough to see from this distance, even with no lights on.

"Can we hide in this box? This rain is going to just ruin my hair." Taffyta whined, covering her head and pulling her hat on tighter.

"Now, here we are at the Shooting Gallery, and it's time to give out your special CarneEvil goodie-bags, as you are our first visitors this fine Halloween evening." The tall wooden shooting gallery loomed over them a little, and behind the curtain in the front desk sat about ten or so purple paper bags with black twine handles, three of the bags were orange with yellow straps instead. Umlaut handed them out by balancing six at a time on the spinning edges of his collar.

King Candy wasted no time in examining the contents of his purple goodie bag, finding the carnival programme (dated 1898 still, obviously), one of the tokens Umlaut had given him earlier (that he'd left in Sugar Rush), and a bag of popcorn. Good enough as welcome gifts, he supposed, for a party they were hosting. Maybe it was to make them less judgemental of their lack of suitable preparation.

A few feet away from the shooting gallery, far away enough to go unnoticed for the most part, was a small gravestone, with something perched on the top.

Umlaut caught him looking.

"Hehe, that's the gravestone prop for our boss. The illustrious, magnificent ringmaster of our carnival, Baron Von Tökkentäkker. We used it in the intro. Well, it all started when he was born I guess. You see…"

"Von? Isn't that the Glitch's name too?" Minty Zaki didn't look at the gravestone any closer to see if she was right, and Rancis was quick to correct her.

"No, Von's his middle name."

"Yeah, I know, and she's called Van-/p>

"No, Minty dear, we will _not_ talk about the Glitch. We won't have her ruining our party when thhe ithn't even here."

"…He was on track to get his shiny new Archaeology doctorate by the age of thirty, but his real love was the circus. He wandered around our lovely land of Germany with his tiny troupe of friends, dug up a fossil or two, trying to find himself, and instead he found me."

"Were you just a head back then?" Asked Rancis, pointing even though he probably knew it was impolite. "How did that happen?"

"Ahah! I bet he wath, heh, trying to get a-head of everyone elthe!

"Ha, you must be the King of Bad Puns too! Anyway, it was obvious what we had to do. We made a deal- I made sure his carnival went all, and I got to have years of endless fun. Four hundred years of living inside a token can be _so_ boring" Everyone glanced at the tokens inside their welcome bags. "–no, no, not _those_ tokens, this one had my face on it, and it is the best token ever." He floated up and down as if he were nodding and agreeing with himself. "Soon enough we made it to America, just a normal carnival, if a little twisted, we might've got carried away sometimes, but we just had so many _wonderful_ plans. Then we came to GreelyValley, they didn't understand us. Nope, not at all. We set up for a few weeks, and it looked like things were gonna pick up. Then, one night, the Big Top caught fire, and no one came to save us. We all perished that Halloween night, one hundred years ago tonight, in fact."

_When the Moon is full and trees are bare, walk through the cemetery if you dare_

There was a faint whisper on the air, from somewhere far away. It must have been the cabinet's demo voice over. King Candy ignored it, he could ignore Sugar Rush's repetitive music easily enough, something like a voice over would be effortless.

Umlaut was still exaggerating, two of his collar points coming to pretend to wipe his eyes.

"Is it not the most tragic back-story you have ever heard?"

"Not really." Crumbelina folded her arms and shook her head. "You weren't being particularly nice to anyone, that's why they wanted you to go away."

"'Go away'? By letting our whole livelihood burn down, and us with it? Who's the say that _they_ didn't burn us down on purpose?"

_Where skeletons rot and corpses fester, locate the tomb with the skull of a Jester_

"Well, they forgot all about us, and as if getting burned down wasn't bad enough, they even built this cemetery on top of our old site!" Umlaut paused for a moment, probably to see if they'd sympathise with him any more. He perked up regardless. "There's a happy ending though! We hadn't had nearly as much fun as I was promised, and neither had they. So I brought everyone back. This way we get to stay in business forever, and never stop having fun!"

_Feed him the token all shiny and new,_

"…Burned you down? That's horrible!" Candlehead blurted out suddenly, as if she'd only just heard what Umlaut had said a good three minutes before. "Huh? Oh…" Everyone ignored her, and even King Candy couldn't resist a slight eye roll and a sigh at the girl's dizziness. He saw her potter off towards the grave and kneel down, and he thought no more about it. Umlaut was watching her, and he could have sworn there was a tiny twitch in his constant smile. King Candy watched him as he drifted closer.

"What are you doing?"

_It is then that CarnEvil will return for YOU!_

"Hey, kid, stop!" Something clamped against metal with a clang, and a rough tremor ran through the floor.

QUARTER ALERT

QUARTER ALERT

A voice with some sort of accent echoed around, speaking it slowly just to rub it in. Umlaut grimaced and shook his head so hard he spun around. King Candy could hear his hat jingling hollowly.

"Now look what you've done!"

He might have said something else for how long Umlaut circled around her with his teeth glinting, but King Candy couldn't hear it over the noise of the carnival coming to life in the distance and the screaming of the other racers. Lightning streaked across the clouded sky, illuminating the cemetery gate, until only a large carnival entrance stood in its place, the CarnEvil banner fluttering in the wind, its heavy wooden doors sealed shut.

Without another word about whatever was happening _at all_ , Umlaut slipped away, whether he was settling into his real gaming role as a Bad Guy or just running away from whatever had gone wrong King Candy wasn't sure, but he gave chase all the same, Sour Bill hopping into the small gap in his seat again as they drove after him.

When he stole a glance behind him Candlehead was still knelt down, the ground still shaking all around her, without a care in the world, as if waiting to see if her token would come back. It was too late to try and help her, and even if anyone called after her she probably wouldn't listen.

The other racers had far too much sense to stay put, and dispersed deeper into the carnival, in fragmented clumps, running every which way, all of them wondering what they would find within it, and if they would ever leave.


	2. Snow cones, Popsicles and Taffy Apples

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What goes up must come down, now you’re headed for-- No, I’m not doing that. On with the chapter.

Somewhere in between screaming and looking for a place to hide Minty Zaki supposed she must have started running instead (and then resumed screaming). That was the only explanation for how she'd ended up on the floor after smashing into a wooden pole. Great, now she was trapped in a game she knew nothing about, in the middle of nowhere, with no idea where she was or how she'd got there.

She had a good mind to blame all of this on Candlehead, that creepy floating guy had tried to stop her doing…whatever it was she was doing before that weird storm—earthquake— _thing_ happened, so it must've been bad. Hopefully King Candy was busy punishing her for being so stupid, like she deserved to be, but finding out where exactly she'd ended up was probably a better way to start off than worrying about Candlehead.

Thinking nothing more about it Minty pushed herself up, fixed her bow, dusted off her skirt, and looked up at the wooden sign. 'Rickety Town' was spelt out with slanted wooden strips painted black, and out past it, inside, were lots of bright lights and cheery music. Hmph, well, she knew better than to fall for _that_. If the graveyard and the rain and the _name_ of this game were anything to go by, nothing she happened to bump into would be halfway normal. There was no way she was-

"Wow, Minty, we didn't think you were going to stop!"

Minty jumped so hard she _actually_ jumped, and latched onto the signpost she'd ran into, half expecting it to be some kind of freakish monster. Only a pink, blue, and purplish blob looked up at her. It was Taffyta, Adorabeezle, and Snowanna.

"You guys, you were following me?" Adorabeezle nodded with a nervous smile, the bobbles on her hat bouncing.

"Well, everyone we could see ran this way, and you just looked like, y'know, you really knew where you were going. Also Taffyta thinks King Candy came this way, and he'll know what to do." Minty just looked, how could they have thought she had any idea what she was doing? Snowanna called up to her.

"Get down from there, we aren't gonna bite, and we can't lose him. We might never find him then." With a "hm" they probably didn't hear Minty shimmied back down the signpost, disturbing a bit of dirt when she landed (dirt, not mud, it must've dried with the rain gone, but it certainly wasn't chocolate powder like back home). At least the rain stopping would keep Taffyta happy. A Taffyta with anything off with her face or hair was not a Taffyta to be within a mile of.

"N-no, I really didn't, my eyes were closed and everything." She glanced at the two other attraction areas at either side of Rickety Town. That's where everyone else must've been. "I just ran in a straight line from the Shooting Gallery." Minty might have not enjoyed admitting the times when she messed up, and wasn't one to not take credit whether it was hers or not, but she didn't want to give them the idea that she knew what she was doing, especially not in a game like this. That way, at least, she couldn't get blamed if things went…wrong. "I don't know where we are any better than you guys."

"Huh, guess it's good that I showed up then." Taffyta stepped forward, another lollipop from her seemingly endless supply in hand. "Well, I _am_ the only one who saw King Candy come this way, so I should be the one that takes the lead here …Yeah." Taffyta popped the lollipop in her mouth for good measure.

Minty just shrugged. If Taffyta wanted to be in charge that was fine, there would be no point in arguing her, besides, this was no place to be arguing with each other when everything else was probably against them. At least this way Minty wouldn't have anything else to be blamed for, leading them here or otherwise. As if the red neon to her right and the moving painted board to her left looked any more appealing, or welcoming, or safe. She just let Taffyta do whatever she thought she was doing and followed her into Rickety Town, flitting under its signpost like it could fall down at any moment. Whatever happened now, it would be her fault.

As soon as the last of them crossed into Rickety Town, a high pitched shriek burst from the speakers dotted around, and it took everything Minty had not to jump up latch onto the sign again, and this time she might've actually pulled it down. The sound fizzled out, like just after King Candy was finished testing his mic when he made announcements. Like she'd half expected, with the interference gone now a voice echoed out of the speakers, but of course, it wasn't King Candy on the other end.

"You'll lose your worries you'll lose all care

in Rickety Town I have a hunch."

Oh, it was that guy. He must've still been sneaking-floating around somewhere.

"You'll lose your voice from too much screaming,

I bet you'll even lose your lunch!" And then his over exaggerated, kinda annoying cackling carried on for another ten seconds straight, too awkward for any of them to dare to interrupt it or go anywhere. Wow, that guy could laugh!

"I thought he said he _wasn't_ going to rhyme anymore." Taffyta scoffed, it reminded of her Tovald's complaining earlier. Minty wondered where she'd ended up, but the recolours weren't really important anyway, not 'proper' racers at any rate.

"Maybe it's already recorded and plays whenever someone comes through here." Adorabeezle suggested.

It was possible, even though this place had only just been plugged in, lots of things like music and some voice clips could have been prerecorded, or he could just still be hanging around, Minty wasn't sure which one it was, and thought it best not to dwell on it. The music blearing out here was bouncy and light enough, with lots of 'la's and chimes everywhere, far too cheery, a trap.

"Maybe. Whatever, let's just find King Candy and get out of here."

Directly ahead was some sort of red and white carriage on a rail, sort of like a kart without a steering wheel, or wheels, or peddles, or comfortable looking seats, so not much like a kart really but it was all she could think of. The letters made of what looked like clear hard candy spattered with raspberry sauce ( _'not a great mix, these people have no taste'_ ) spelled out 'SLAY RIDE', so this weird not-kart thing was probably the 'Slay'.

As they approached to inspect the Slay, out from inside popped three ugly little…things. They looked like people, only a lot thinner, with much smaller heads than they had even though they were the same-ish size, with grey skin and long pointed ears and teeth and claws. They wore green dresses trimmed with white, striped socks, and green hats with a yellow bobble on the end, like Beard Papa's but floppier. One threw a white box at them, which Snowanna caught, crouching down at the weight of it.

 _What's_ in _those things?_

Clearly Snowanna didn't share her curiosity, and merely threw the box back, knocking one of the creatures out from the Slay, the box breaking open and spilling out icing sugar (Minty severely doubted it was really icing sugar, but that's what it looked like). The remaining two hopped out, both holding something white and red, swiping at them with-

"Candy tree twigs? Now that's just mean!" Shouted Snowanna, and Minty would have nodded if she weren't busy herself. Sweet Seekers and Cherry Bombs were all well and good during racing, but fighting with sticks? That was just _wrong_.

"Hey, we weren't bothering you guys. Why did you-?"

"This is a shooting game 'Beezle; they're programmed to attack anyone."

Not for the first time Minty wished she was back home, not here pushing away these horrible deformed things that might've been gnomes swinging candy twigs at her. She pushed one of them out of the Slay, falling in herself in its place. With the four of them inside, the carriage started pulling itself up the track.

"It's better this way, we can get a good look of things, and get around the place faster than walking."

"If you say so."

With Taffyta and Minty in front, and Adorabeezle and Snowanna in the back, the four of them held on to the Slay for dear life as it got dragged further up the track.

"Guys."

A Bumpy, but uneventful ride. This might not be so bad.

"Uh, guys… _guys._ "

"Everyone look for King Candy, he'll be in his kart so it won't be hard to-"

"Guys, guys, seriously now everyone." Adorabeezle spoke up again, a little more urgently.

"Ugh, what is it, 'Beezle? I'm kinda busy here."

"There…the track's kinda…not finished." Without even waiting for them to answer Adorabeezle had already dived out of the Slay, onto the wooden boards beside the track.

Just great, of all the rides to choose, they had to choose the broken one! And as if things couldn't get any worse, the gnomes had managed to follow them up the track. Where could they go now?

While Minty and Taffyta thought about how best to fight off the gnomes, Snowanna was already helping Adorabeezle into a rotating wheel ride beside the track, one of the compartments moving upwards as the wheel turned.

Seeing it as the much easier option compared to fighting, Minty did a somersault and landed on the compartment with them, a little unsteady, but at least she was there. Now, who was missing?

Taffyta stood at the top of the Slay Ride, catching sight of them and the ever widening gap between the track and the carriages beside it.

"What're you guys doing?"

"Taffyta, jump on! We'll catch you."

"No, you'll get trapped in there! You should have listened to me! I, um, I'll catch up…I'll meet you when you get off!" With a quick wave Taffyta ran off to get down from the broken track, while the others just could watch and wait for whenever she turned up again.

On this giant moving wheel, it wasn't like _they_ were going anywhere soon.

* * *

"I hope Jubileena's ok, I wish we didn't all get separated back when everything went wrong." Adorabeezle moped with a sigh, pulling her knees up. They'd all huddled up in the corners of the compartment so they wouldn't be seen. The ride'd jammed right at the top, so for the time being it was best to pretend that they weren't here. The giant half-broken statue of a guy with an axe and a beard next to the wheel was kinda scary too, better not look at it.

"I think I saw her running towards the Entrance before it changed, so maybe she got out." Minty nearly smiled at Snowanna's optimism. She hadn't seen anyone going anywhere really, so it could've been the truth.

"I hope so. She might even get help for us. Actually…I hope everyone's ok."

"Hoping's all we can do, stuck up here—uh, leave us alone." Snowanna frowned, batting at the half a dozen fat yellow flies that insisted and ramming into her hair, trying to take clumps out with their pincers. "These things're worse than Black Liquorice Crows!"

_Come on and ride, Big Bunyan Ride!_

The music was stuck on a loop too, and they all had a feeling that it'd only get worse the more they heard it, regardless of the fact that they'd only been on the wheel for little over two minutes.

_No place to hide, Big Bunyan Ride!_

"Huh, cool music. It's kinda catchy, actually."

"Not really the time, Snowanna."

_Come on inside, Big Bunyan Ride, We'll ride 'n' ride, into the night!_

"What can I say, I love all music!"

_You will scream and cry, and then you'lldie,_

_then you'll die,_

_then you'll die,_

_then you'll die!_

"…Except this one!"

It was gonna be a long night.

* * *

Taffyta had _no idea_ where she was going. How could she, really? King Candy might have come this way, she might have seen his kart but that didn't really matter now. They could have been with her and it would have been so much easier to pretend she did. Those three, being stupid and not listening to her, when she knew best. She was King Candy's favourite, everyone knew that, and for a _very_ good reason, because she was smart, pretty and one of the best drivers, obviously! She wasn't on Monday's roster for nothing.

Well, for now she'd just have to look after herself and hope they had the sense to find her once they came down from that Big Wheel thingy. After holing out in one of the cable cars that ran along the track until those 'gnomes' had gone away she'd ended up back at the beginning of the 'Slay Ride'. Adorabeezle had mentioned cable cars a few times, when she went skiing back home, and though Taffyta didn't care for it one bit, she wouldn't find it _as_ inferior to racing in every which way as she had before.

For a moment she entertained the idea of just leaving Rickety Town altogether, trying her luck elsewhere, or trying to climb over the carnival's entrance and get help maybe. The others might not wait for her, after all, why should she take the risk of waiting around for them too? They could have left her already anyway.

Going around the back of the Slay Ride, and off to her left around some bright red stalls she thought about which way to go. Everything seemed nice and quiet, besides the weird music coming from the 'Big-Wheel-Thingy', and from this place that couldn't be anything good. Those gnomes could just be hiding, waiting for her to get distracted.

_I think I should try and find King Candy; at least he has a kart so he can outdrive whatever's here…_

It wasn't much of a plan, but it was the only one she had right now.

Strange roaring sounds came from the Giant-Miniegg spinning ride with something that looked like a small version of Diet Cola Mountain at the end, and she hurried past without looking at it any further.

_Better just stay away from there._

Soon enough she stumbled through three arches plastered with advertisements, into some sort of food court. Next to one of the benches was someone hunched over a mop, wiping at the floor without actually going anywhere. It didn't look like one of those gnomes, it was too tall, and Taffyta wrinkled her nose. Oh yes, she knew what it was.

Teenagers were gross, rude things. Once or twice she'd seen that Paperboy riding around like he couldn't even steer properly (though why he chose a bike over something like a kart was beyond her), throwing his boring newspapers everywhere. This particular one seemed grosser and ruder than most, its skin a grey-ish colour, with one eye squinting all the time and thin droopy strings of black for hair. It was wearing an orange shirt and shorts, and a small boxy hat on its head (not even one that actually fit), with weird yellow sticks poking out.

It carried on half-heartedly cleaning, standing up fully and leaning on its mop when it saw her. Taffyta was just passing through; she hadn't the time to deal with this teenager and whatever it had to say.

"Go away. I don't need an ugly boy like _you_ coming over and bothering me!"

"Boy? _Boy?_ " It leaned in with a scowl, its nametag read Linda. _Oh._ "Well, we'll just see what the _actual_ boys make of you then." The…apparent girl, no matter how scratchy her voice, unceremoniously dropped her mop and scooped Taffyta up by the scruff of her jacket, carrying her off towards another food stand.

Two other teenagers were laughing among each other, next to a big metal drum. One was squirting water at the other. "Quit it, you know I'm unarmed. Can't believe they lost my welcome bag."

"Jeez, Rick, chill out, Umlaut said he'd send Smeek to check up on it later. It's not like yours's the only one."

"Kinda difficult when you keep shooting—Hey Legz, here to swap ya shifts again?" Rick looked down at the squirming, kicking and shouting Taffyta. "Watcha got there?"

Linda - or was it Legz?- shook her to keep her quiet.

"One of those little _Tinsels_ that're visiting."

"Ooh, a mini Tinsel, you shouldn'ta come here, kid. Which one're you, Candlehead?"

"What? No! I'm Taffyta, how could you-"

"Taffie-tah? Oh, Taffy! We know _exactly_ what to do with you then; we've got a Taffy Puller out back! C'mon Legz, Burrito, we'll make this one nice and tall, then…I dunno we can have her working the pizza stand or somethin'." Rick peeked around the edge of the big drum.

"Wait—what, where's the Taffy Puller?"

"Didn't Umlaut say they were taking it Over There for the Credits?" Taffyta could almost feel Legz sighing and rolling her eyes. "I _do_ work at this Turkey Leg stand y'know." Whatever a turkey was Taffyta doubted it could be anything worthwhile, or safe. "He got it taken ages ago."

"Did he? That sucks! We didn't even get to use it. Oh well, let's just throw her in the _acid._ "

"A-A-Acid?!"

"Acid—Oil, meh, we aren't too sure yet, but still, it's awesome. Ya won't feel a thing! It's just _that_ good."

"What?! Legz just pushed herself over the counter one handed, holding tight onto her arms while Rick grabbed her feet. "Hey, no, stop!"

"Ok, ready?"

"Ready!"

"This is gonna be _awwwesome!_ " Of course that other one had to just chime in.

"Let go! Get off me, I bite!"

"One," They swung her up, but didn't let go.

"two,"

"I didn't mean to call you a boy Linda seriously!"

"three!"

Even with Burrito not helping, Taffyta flew up in the air, flailed a little, and then tumbled into the drum with just a single splash and nothing more. As it turns out, the acid, oil— _thing_ , was just _that_ good.

The three Guilloteens proceeded to give high fives all around on a job well done.

* * *

After a good twenty minutes of being trapped atop the Big Bunyan Ride, getting assaulted by insects and its repetitive music, the three of them finally made it down, or rather, the ride stopped being broken. Without anywhere else to go, and for the sake of thinking Taffyta predictable the trio had pottered about and found the remaining track of the Slay Ride (it _had_ been Taffyta's idea to ride it in the first place after all).

"Huh, she's not here. Well, _we'r_ e here now, so we should at least ride it and see if we can spot her. Hopefully there's no more of those gnomes around." Just in case this track was as bad as the other one Minty looked to see where the track led, it looked all in one piece, _that_ was something.

 _These people are bad at everything, it's_ their _carnival and they can't even build their rides properly. No wonder this place is called Rickety Town._

The ride was just as unstable as its previous section, though far more eventful. They passed by a decoration of a brown unicandycorn without a horn and a bright red nose, and through rings of fire. Adorabeezle and Snowanna curled up in the bottom seats, ducking down to avoid it, but Minty just froze.

_Thetrack'sonfirethetrack'sonfirewhat'rewegonnado!_

Maybe the ride would be over before the whole thing burned down. She stood up on her tiptoes, trying to see where the track ended up, inside some sort of white dome…

"A giant snow globe?" Adorabeezle was probably right, she just had a feeling.

"Wonder what's inside."

"It's probably dangerous!"

"As long as we stick together, we'll be fine, won't we?"

"Of course we will!" Minty couldn't share their optimism, what chance did they have, really? They'd already lost Taffyta, which one of them would be next?

The Slay barrelled down its final spiralling drop, and the two racers behind her flinched, huddling again.

_I can't…I can't do this._

Without any sort of warning or suggestion to the others Minty Zaki leapt out the side of the Slay, much like Adorabeezle had earlier, landing in a pile of 'icing sugar' before scrambling to her feet, while the Slay itself carried on with Snowanna and Adorabeezle in tow, the door latching shut after them.

_I always was the best jumper…_

Minty didn't even look back, here she was, running and screaming just like before. Whatever was in there, she'd have been trapped with, why should she take that risk? It was selfish, yes, but—but she had to! She couldn't just go in there and let herself get killed by whatever was inside, even if that meant…

As long as she was with someone else she could stay safe for a little while longer. And in a place like this that was all that mattered.

It was going to be a long, _long_ night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I used to be a good writer? Nope, me neither. I’m sure I’m just really out of practice. Writing the Sugar Rush Racers is kinda difficult, because most of them have no personality to take reference from, hope I did an ok job with these four. Minty Zaki does seem like a pretty amazing jumper though, did you see that flip she had to do in the movie to reach Vanellope’s kart when everyone was breaking it?
> 
> Needing to intentionally misspell sleigh so much hurt me…
> 
> Sorry for writing about Rickety Town first, I know there’s no actual order the levels need to be played in but Rickety Town is the only one I ever saw being played when I was younger so I think of it as the first level.
> 
> Sugar Rush just doesn’t get Christmas, all Rickety Town’s Christmasy-ness is in vain! The other, non-Christmas-y enemies in Rickety Town will be shown when we see King Candy’s adventure there next chapter (is now a bad time to tell you guys that you probably should watch someone actually play through the game so you know how the levels are? There game’s pretty short, about the length of House of the Dead one…ish?). By the way, for anyone who doesn’t know, the little Christmas elf enemies are called Tinsels, and are children who were captured (the ‘boss’ enemy of Rickety Town, that Minty saw at the end of the chapter), so that’s why one of the Guilloteens (the undead teenagers who work at the food court) called Taffyta a Tinsel. Not sure if Guilloteen is the real name of them, as some people call them Skeleteens, but when I checked Midway’s trademarks of that year and in the CarnEvil enemy names section (dated around July 1998) there’s Guilloteen, but no Skeleteen.
> 
> Now, I didn’t want to use any of Umlaut’s rhymes that are actually in the game before each level starts, so instead I used an unused rhyme that I found while I was playing. You can listen to it here- www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3y91ohybFA
> 
> An interesting fact about this rhyme is that its rhyming pattern is abcb (only the second and fourth lines rhyme, and this reflects the rhyming scheme of 3/4 of the other levels in the game. However, the rhyme actually used for Rickety Town is aabb (both the first and second, and third and fourth line rhyme), making it the odd one out among the other rhymes in the game. This, and the fact that the unused rhyme is abcb, I believe that that Rickety Town is the only level to have had its rhyme replaced (also I haven’t found any more unused sound clips, yet).
> 
> See you all in two weeks guys.  
> Remember when I used to be a good writer? Nope, me neither. I’m sure I’m just really out of practice. Writing the Sugar Rush Racers is kinda difficult, because most of them have no personality to take reference from, hope I did an ok job with these four.
> 
> Needing to intentionally misspell sleigh so much hurt me…


	3. Vanilla EyeScream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for not posting this. I've just been lazy. But hey I've been accepted into university, so now I have to write more :) Oh, and in response to that review I got- I never said this fic fits in with the movie. By the way, this chapter takes place just before and during chapter 2.

While most of the other racers of Sugar Rush had 'fun' at their Halloween party, and with Wynchel and Duncan patrolling the Kart Factory while the king was away, everything was oddly peaceful, quiet apart from the constantly jovial attract mode music.

The post-roster race air was still, the residents and usual spectators tucked up in their candy houses with nothing more to do for the night. It seemed nothing of much interest was in store for Sugar Rush that night, until out scurried little Vanellope von Schweetz, off hunting. Not the normal kind of skittering around and scavenging she did when collecting jelly beans to eat (though she quickly reminded herself that she needed to stock up soon), no, this was hunting for furniture.

She'd spotted everyone leaving for something weird sounding earlier, and she wasn't about to pass up on a chance to go foraging for stuff to make her new-ish home more homely (a gross sugar-free arch of a door just didn't cut it, but it kept everyone out at least). It was for the best no one ever found it; they'd call it fake, unfinished and glitchy just like they called her. They couldn't be more wrong, inside she _knew_ they were wrong, but if the others thought she had no place in the game, then she'd just make a place for herself, simple as that.

Vanellope didn't know exactly when she found the secret entrance inside Diet Cola Mountain, but times were still kinda tricky to figure out with a game only…she supposed it must've been less than a year old, right? Sure it might've been a little warm with the _boiling cola_ everywhere, and that unfinished track kinda looked weird, but there was a charm about it. It didn't really matter, it was her home now, and homes needed decorating.

She was in a canopy mood, and that meant finding some nice sturdy chocolate wafer wedges, and some Red Vines to hold it all together. That couldn't be _that_ hard, right?

Even only after a few minutes of searching she found herself drawn towards the race track. Whenever she got too close while watching them race sometimes King Candy'd kick up a fuss, calling her a glitch like always, that she was trying to ruin everything, but even when she was caught he just said she wasn't worth the effort in punishing until his special 'Fungeon' was finished, and then she'd see. As if that'd stop her trying. What'd he know, anyway? Just because he was old didn't mean he was right, Vanellope _knew_ she was a racer, she had to be, and one day she'd prove it.

Well, with no one here they couldn't stop her having a look around, and so she tiptoed closer, across the taffy strips of the Finish Line. It almost felt like she'd been this close before, but that made no sense, and she tried to ignore it.

"Ugh, it's so quiet and empty here, kinda creepy actually." If it hadn't been sunny out (like always) she might've shivered a little at the idea.

Something caught the light, over by King Candy's stand a drop of gold glittered against the orange crown pattern on the ground.

"Ooh, what's that?" Vanellope carried on tiptoeing even though it wasn't as if anyone would be back any time soon. She might've still been looking for wafers and Red Vines but that didn't mean she couldn't be a little curious either, and it could always be something cool, whatever the thing was.

Once she'd reached it the thing turned out of be a large coin, a lot like the ones the other racers used to get into the Roster Race and whatever else they were allowed to do racing-wise that she wasn't. Instead of the usual hole in the middle there was some guy's face she didn't recognise printed on the front, and some words and numbers, kinda fake and cheap looking.

"Huh, a chocolate coin?" She started scratching the side, looking for where it opened, but her nails didn't catch anything. Did they have to make it so hard to open? When all else failed she took a curious chomp- "Ouch! Well, that didn't work." Nope, solid gold…then…that meant…

"Sweet mother of monkey milk! It's a real-!"She glitched so hard the coin dropped straight through her hands. Plucking it from the floor again she clutched it to her chest so no one could see. "…a real one." She whispered. Thief wasn't something she wanted added to her list of 'names' any time soon. She had to keep calm and not look suspicious should anyone see, but how could she? It was a gold coin, a real one! Now she could-

Vanellope grinned what might have been her biggest grin ever, before tucking the oversized coin into her jacket and dashing back towards home, once or twice doing an aerial cartwheel, she just couldn't help it.

Forget decorating; now she had a _much_ better way to spend her time.

* * *

Sticky knew _Burger Time_ was _old_ , at least as old as that fixing game across the way and, like, ten times the age their game was, maybe even more! That was really amazing; she really hoped that their game could last that long, or even longer.

What was even more amazing was the fact that she was finally visiting it. He always talked about it, as soon as he'd found it he'd promised to show her one day, and now he had.

With only half of its tables decorated in orange and black for the occasion the pair had settled into their table's enclosed area on the third floor of the elaborately structured restaurant. Sticky didn't really understand why only half was decorated, maybe some people didn't think much of Halloween, and just wanted to visit it as it normally was? It could've been that, those in the other half acted like it wasn't any kind of special day at all.

Having a whole table just for the two of them felt a little silly, but Swizzle must've gone through so much trouble to get it for them it was just too sweet to mind. What looked like the chef wandered over and set down two plates each holding something he called a burger with two black paper bat wings poking out of both sides, and two tall glasses of pumpkin pie milkshake. Swizzle always said this place was the best restaurant in the arcade, but she'd never been to any other restaurants around here, or really any other game for that matter. Still, she believed him.

A group what looked like tiny dinosaurs, two with wings (a blue one and a green one), and eight without (three blues, two greens, a red one, a pink one and a yellow one), a woman with tall white hair and what looked like a red zigzagged necklace, and a shorter man with weird blue-grey skin and wonky eyes sat crowded at the table across from them. The dinosaurs all chatted between each other with lots of growls and chirps, and the woman laughed at almost everything whatever the man managed to groan out that Sticky couldn't even hope to understand. Swizzle caught her watching them, and frowned.

"I guess they're kinda noisy, huh? Do you want us to move? I made sure there's space underneath." Already Swizzle had stood up and was ready to start stamping to make their little compartment and table drop a floor, impulsive as anything.

"No, it's alright, this place is great, it's wonderful here. I'm just not used to seeing all these people, but it's really interesting." He reminded her of Gloyd sometimes that way, but whereas Gloyd was just random, Swizzle always meant something by whatever he ended up doing. Hm…Gloyd, was today important for him, somehow? Being a recolour she didn't spend much time around the others, but she felt it was. It didn't really matter anyway, since he was off with the others at their party.

She took a sip of her milkshake. "I hope the others are having fun. Maybe we should have invited them to come here too."

"Nah, they don't care, not really. You're the only one who gets it. Besides, King Candy planned it for them, if they all came here that'd be ungrateful." It wasn't really their fault that Swizzle's plans about Halloween got in the way of King Candy's party, as far as they knew Swizzle was the first one to discover Halloween when he'd first heard about it…about a month ago. Still, he'd gone and got his reservation straight away, and it was the thought that counted in that respect. "And besides, it only got plugged in today, it can't be _that_ interesting. I bet they aren't even set up properly."

"I guess. Still, I hope they're having fun whatever they're doing over there. But I'm really glad you invited me here, Swizzle I'm glad I'm here with you, I'd probably get bored over there."

Swizzle was right, there probably wasn't much going on at their party anyway, she was much better off here.

* * *

This hadn't gone as planned. _At all,_ and that was putting it lightly!

It might have stopped raining, so his tyres weren't squelching and squeaking on the floor any more, but it wasn't really the best time to be thinking about something like that now, was it?

King Candy shifted up another gear, still trying to catch up to Umlaut while he was leading him closer to the carnival. If there was anyone who could tell him _what_ was happening, and how to stop it, it was him. Sour Bill was squashed between his seat and the kart door, and for the most part just tried to stay on rather than say anything.

"Get back here you—uh, aerodynamic clown, you!" Umlaut just carried on, glancing back once or twice, keeping an even distant between them; just enough that they could hear each other but without there risk that King Candy could get in reach of latching on. The bright trail of sparkles fell and flew in his face, and King Candy sneezed. "Thlow down!"

"No can do, kinda busy, Quarter Alert 'n' all." He flipped over, floating backwards and upside down, his bright red mouth and spinning strips of his collar downright terrifying in the dark. Maybe getting closer to the bright lights of the attractions would help. "Don't be blaming us for doing our jobs. Anyway, gotta go, we can chat later! Have fun now!" And just like that Umlaut had sped forward, under a signpost, and past that until he was just a purple-gold speck, trailing more sparkles, like he still wanted him to follow, as if King Candy could keep up.

Well that was just great, now he was stuck in the middle of nowhere with his only source of direction literally flying away, and it wouldn't be perfect for Umlaut if he didn't do so while laughing. With an exasperated sigh King Candy stopped the kart, considering what to do now while parked before the sign that read _Rickety Town_.

"Are we still following him, Sire?"

"Well, there'th nowhere else to go, and we need to make thure the otherth can thtay thafe." Finding the other racers was for the best, if they were all together then they had a better chance of fighting off…whatever they could bump into here. "Besides, with the Quarter Alert the Good Guys here will be able to help uth. We just have to find them"

"Oh, ok then." Sour Bill plonked back down, and crouched down so no one could see him. "…Are we going to using anything to defend ourselves, Sire?"

"Why would we need to do that, we'll be thafe in my kart."

"Just in case?"

"Well then, what did you have in mind?"

"Hmmm…" Sour Bill picked up his goodie bag and started digging around as well as he could without diving inside. "There's a note inside, for 'Rick', and this water gun." He lifted up what was, compared to Sour Bill's size, a pretty large squidgy-plastic water gun.

"Who'th wath it?"

"Someone called Rick's, I guess. It must've got mixed up."

"Let'th jutht focuth on- hoohoo -thtaying _inthisde_ the kart then." All they had to do was take things as they came, and keep calm, that sounded good too.

Upon cautiously driving into the entrance of Rickety Town King Candy's eyes were instantly assaulted by the giant 'SLAY RIDE' sculpture made of fake ice and snow. He grimaced. What kind of decorating was that? Halloween wasn't even over and already they'd designed their rollercoaster to be Christmas themed? It didn't make any kind of sense, and he did his best to ignore it, escaping a group of grumpy looking elves by simply outdriving them.

Now, to find the others.

_If I was a vastly inferior racer stuck in this game, where would I hide? Well, somewhere where I wouldn't get found…somewhere closed in._

For a little while they followed along the rollercoaster tracks, past where it randomly decided to break apart – or the point they'd given up on it. Either way it just screamed bad workmanship, not like back in _Sugar Rush._

Ooh, what was that over there? It was some sort of curved, open top building with large blocky letters at the front. "Gar-ge? What'th that thuppothed to—aahh!" Almost too late King Candy swerved to avoid the giant metal 'A' stuck in the floor, and ended up skidding into the garage itself. He was half expecting to smash into all sorts of non-candy car parts, but the place was deserted, pretty much. "Oh, haha ,it's just the Bumper Cars, phew."

Umlaut's voice blared over the intercom, probably broadcasting all over the park, but whatever he was saying didn't sound very interesting. King Candy passed by all sorts of adverts like, 'Who wants an EyeScream Soda?!' and 'RIP: Motor Oil with some LIFE!'. Hmph, this game's sense of humour!

"Watch your driving, sir!" A man in a horrible gaudy blue car smashed into his kart. He wore a white mechanic's uniform and an unsettling grin, his name tag said Bob.

" _My_ driving? I'm the greatetht racer in thith arcade, it'th you who can't drive!"

"Don't forget to wear a seatbelt, sir." Within a second of getting out of the way another blue car crashed into him. This driver was even called Bob too!

"I'm glad I'm not a racer, Sire…" Sour Bill droned as they finally made it out of the Garage, somehow even greener with nausea than his normal sickly tint.

Determined to get as far away from such terrible drivers and mechanics as those two, King Candy took the scenic route, all around the back of a giant Ferris wheel and towards a ride decorated with fossils and a volcano. That would lead to nothing but trouble, and it would be best to avoid it. King Candy's kart, however, seemed to have other ideas, faltering, before it sputtered to a stop at the ride's entrance.

"We're out of Sugar Powder?!" Their karts usually took fuel from the sugar particles in the air, so never needed refuelling, and obviously this wouldn't be the case here. Well, walking couldn't be _that_ bad, they just had to push the kart to somewhere where it could be safe first.

"RAWR!"

But of course, they had to have company.

Pottering out of the ride's entrance were a trio of teal dinosaurs with diamond plates running along their backs, and green splotches covering them. They stood up on their back legs, almost bouncing from one foot to the other as they approached. Dinosaurs probably couldn't see very well, maybe they would just pass by if he didn't draw attention to himself. It seemed to be going well enough…he didn't move no matter how close they got…

Until one took a bite out of his kart.

_No one touched his kart._ Grabbing the first thing he could King Candy lashed out, or at least, he _would_ have, had the stick his car horns were attached to not passed through the dinosaur's face completely, and he fell flat on his face from the swing of it. Whether it was some sort of _real_ glitch or the creature suffered from Pixlexia the King Candy couldn't be sure, and there was the now more pressing matter that he was surrounded by three very hungry creatures with no means of attacking them.

Any other time his kart would have needed to be pried from his cold, dead polygon model fingers before he parted with it, but clearly outmatched by the giant deformed, seemingly invincible dinosaur King Candy didn't fancy being eaten too, and tumbled out of the side, car horn and gift bag in tow. Another dinosaur hopped onto the bonnet with a little victory roar before chewing on the steering wheel.

As if watching his kart get served as a midnight snack wasn't bad enough, one of the more curious dinosaurs carried on following them.

In between running away, and trying to stop it following them King Candy dug out his souvenir token from his gift bag. It was quite a bit smaller than the one he'd been given earlier, but it could do some damage, right, _right?_ It might just go straight through again, but it was kinda shiny, which might distract it enough.

It struck the dinosaur square on the snout, to no avail, though it distracted it enough for Sour Bill to venture close enough to squirt at it with his water gun, and the water gun itself went immediately after. With a very agitated roar it started rubbing at its eyes with undersized arm, and skulked back to eat the rest of his kart, probably out of spite.

Now officially kart-less, they staggered around without any sense of direction, and ended up in some sort of Food Court ran by teenagers in fast food uniforms. A couple of them glared at him from behind the Corn Dog stand's counter, crossing their arms, but not doing much else. It was better than trying to attack him, he supposed. Soon after King Candy came across a trio of them, in much higher spirits it seemed.

"Oh, um…excuthe me?" They were just whooping and high fiving each other, completely ignoring him.

"Can you believe that, calling me a boy! But that was so boss, we need to do that again! Ooh, do you think we'll get in trouble? Umlaut said to…" Though they all looked identical

"Legz, go get Turkey and Piz, and Burrita and… Actually, get everyone. We can do something _really_ epic this time!" While what was probably Legz wandered off King Candy watched it go, towards another pair at the far end of the food court. One of them might have been snorting about something behind him, but it was better to ignore them in case they noticed him.

"Um, Sire? There's-"

"Not now, Thour Bill, we need to get out of here, and that meanth being quiet." Sour Bill opened his mouth like he was going to say something else, but settled for sneaking along to the food court's exit. He vaguely felt like he'd heard a voice back there, but it was probably nothing.

After all of that climbing over the wall boundary out of Rickety Town felt way too easy. Hopefully things would stay that way. It wasn't much of a hope though, he had a feeling that wherever he ended up next, this ruined 'party' could only go even more downhill from now on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh, Vanellope's found the token King Candy lost, how's that gonna pan out? You guys wanted her to have a little part in the fic so you can have it :) Also we get to see what Swizzle and Sticky are up too, I wonder if anyone can guess some of the dinosaurs at the table opposite :) here are some hints
> 
> -All the dinosaurs are from old arcade games (as in pre-1995 old).
> 
> -Four dinosaurs are all from the same game, and are good guys.
> 
> -Four of them are two pairs of the same pair of dinosaurs, but from two different games in the same series, and are good guys
> 
> -The other two are from separate games, and are bad guys in their game.
> 
> I'll say who they all are next chapter, just in case :) Anyone who guesses any right gets a cookie. I'll try and write my next chapter way faster.


	4. Trapped in a Horror Movie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t even ask for an excuse for my laziness, just don’t.

The unexpected and completely unwanted Quarter Alert aside, nothing about this really sat well with Gloyd anyway. For all Swizzle had gushed about it for the last couple of days, nothing about this ‘Halloween’ in this apparently Halloween themed game screamed anything other than unoriginality, and was already pretty worn out in Gloyd’s opinion.

All this was stuff he could have thought up given a second to think it over, and made himself in less than that. He’d already covered up the candy trees around his house back in _Sugar Rush_ in chocolate; they looked just like the ones in this game. All game this was doing was stealing his amazing ideas right out of his head and pretending to be something special.

What seemed like the only good side was that at least they were stealing from something worthwhile, even if this ‘Halloween’ was overshadowing a far more important event that everyone’d forgotten about right after King Candy’s announcement for the party. It certainly wasn’t the birthday he had in mind, but he guessed he wasn’t in much of a position to complain a whole lot, with Jubileena, Rancis and Crumbelina trailing behind him. The girls shivered a little in the cold, still damp from the drizzle, while Rancis combed through his hair. Jubileena trailed further than the others, nearly falling dangerously behind, her head low. He kinda understood. It was easy for her to think everything was always fine back home, where the sun never set, but here, where it was dark and rainy and that cold, pale thing that wasn’t a sun hanged in the sky, it was hard to think of anything good at all. But he couldn’t let her see that pessimism, not from him.

“Aw, c’mon, cheer up Jubi. It ain’t all bad,” He took off his jacket, holding it out for her “at least we have the four of us right now, instead of being alone.”

“I know, I’m just—never mind. You’re right, I gotta stay positive! Thanks, Gloyd.” Rancis gave him a look, wrinkling his nose, only to go and try the exact same thing.

“H-here, Crumbelina, you look cold too.”

“No, thank you. I will be fine.” Rancis just took the posh snub on the nose, slipping his jacket back on.

If Rancis was ever asked, once ( _if_ ) they ever made it out of here, Gloyd knew he would say that they were all following him, that he was the one who had kept his calm and knew exactly what he was doing all along. It didn’t really matter in this case, who was doing what, so long as they stayed out of trouble, even if just one of them ended up making it out of this place in one piece. There wasn’t really much in the way of following going on anyway, this was just where they’d ended up when running away.

“Where are we going? Minty and the others went that way.” Crumbelina waved to somewhere in the general direction behind them, where all the lights were brighter and where he was sure some of them must’ve ended up, to what end was another matter entirely. “Aren’t we going around in circles? Look, it’s this gate again.”

“That gate didn’t have that big glowing sign at the top. This must be a different one.” It was true, atop this gate, however similar to the one they’d entered through before everything went south, sat a bright red sign that buzzed a little. Against the black of the sky it wasn’t hard to make out at all, unfortunately.

HAUNTED HOUSE

“Eep, h-haunted, that means there’ll be ghosts for sure!”

“It’s ok, Jubi, we can defend ourselves against ghosts no problem. Besides the house looks massive, all we’ll hafta do is hide in one room and they’ll never find us.”

“Yeah, you girls haven’t a thing to worry about, we’ll keep ya safe!”

Crumbelina rolled her eyes.

“Really now, you are going to defend us, with what?”

Rancis dug around in his Welcome Goodie Bag, and produced a faint brown object.

“With this, of course.”

Gloyd, being the only other one to still have his bag with him, his strange orange, welcome bag with a splotch of green in the corner, and an odd red ‘J’ in the middle, plucked the same thing from it. It looked like Rancis’s bag had a red spot instead. It seemed like some sort of toy, and stuck to the handle was a small envelope with a letter inside.

“Huh, I have one too, but there’s something written on this-”

_Dear Jacob and Lisa,_

_Here’s your welcome bag! Hope you two are having fun right now. Just remember, your guns won’t work until the first Quarter Alert, so until then we’ll let you play around with these Cork-guns instead. Aren’t they amazing? Of course they are, we made them._

_We’ve given the “GOO-ILL-OH-TINS” some water guns too, so watch out!_

Gloyd couldn’t read one of the words, just sounding it out even though he couldn’t understand it.

_Don’t worry that much about the ‘Acid’, you’ll be fine. . .seriously!_

_Make sure you make friends with everyone before you get to work, and don’t forget about Betty, keep her safe._

_Be good now._

_-MW xoxo_

_P.S. Check that your lenses work._

It didn’t make much sense, any sense really, but what did he expect when the letter wasn’t meant for him?

“I’ve got a letter as well, it must be the same thing.”

While Rancis looked over his letter Gloyd scanned over his own for a second time.

“I wonder who ‘MW’ is.”

“These must’ve belonged to someone in the game and got mixed in with our welcome bags by mistake. What if these people are the Good Guys? If we find them they can help us.”

Jubileena shook her head.

“There aren’t any Good Guys here. Remember what Umlaut told me before? He said. . .”

“It doesn’t matter what he said- he could have been lying. This whole ‘party’ could’ve been a trap. If—if we’re on our own here we need to stick together, and find a good place to hide. You know how it is back home, if the Quarter Alert goes on for so long without the player doing anything it’ll just time out. . . right? Good, then let’s just climb this hill and—and. . .” For a lack of being able to express himself, Rancis just motioned jerkily towards the gate before taking a gulp and pushing it open.

For what things they could make out from behind the bars of the gate, nothing in their less than a year back home could have prepared them for what lay beyond it, on the steep, twisted path up to the Haunted House.

Up they went, all hand in hand, with Gloyd up in front, then Jubileena, with Crumbelina third and Rancis at the back keeping watch. It wasn’t a great hope, but the house seemed like their safest bet, and they all clung to it, and each other, extra tight to make sure it was true. Yup, get up the hill, that’s easy. It’d be so much easier if they had their karts, but. . .walking wasn’t that hard, even on these steep steps so much harder than rock candy, surely? Get into the house and everything will be fine.

More of those stone things that Candlehead had gotten close to before things went wrong were scattered over the left side of the hill, broken and cracked in places. All of them had the mind to keep well away, they were nothing but trouble. He tried to not think about Candlehead, she hadn’t run away like them, maybe she couldn’t? Either way, what else was there to wonder, really? What had happened to her was obvious, it just didn’t bear thinking about. That’s why he had to keep everyone safe, no one else needed to. . .

The dirt in front of the stone shook, and from out beneath it crawled a bald, very thin and very pale thing with particularly sharp looking teeth, wearing torn up pants and no shoes. And it was wearing a very tall blue and white party hat, but a very awkward and out of place party hat nonetheless. Gloyd almost snorted at the very sight, instead of recoiling as he should. ‘Party’ indeed, now even the monsters were having a laugh at their unoriginality and their cunning in tricking them thinking this was a party at all. The others, the other four or so still climbing up out of the ground, also wore numerous things on their heads: hair that looked like Snowanna’s but all black instead, some yellow pigtails with bows on the end, a pointed striped hat with a ball on the top, a dark blue hat with three points. Without them they might have looked downright horrifying, even worse than Umlaut (though Gloyd thought that guy was kinda cool, just a little), but as they were, and with their shambling, the chance of outrunning them seemed to be a real possibility.

Even though Gloyd knew he should have thought better of it, that he should have been terrified, maybe even only half as terrified as Jubileena was, as much as he could tell from her shaking hand in his when she saw it, but he couldn’t be. For whatever reason he just couldn’t, something, somewhere, and for some reason found it fascinating, not enough for him to want to venture too close, but the interest was there, where it shouldn’t have been.

Keeping directly on the sloped path upwards, outrunning the things wasn’t too difficult, but it wouldn’t be that simple. Getting into the house was probably another obstacle, and whatever lay inside it would be another.

However, as it turned out they seemed to stop being an issue, being so slow, and they made it up to the top of the hill without much more effort. Below, outside the gates of the Haunted House all the lights glittered again, and they spotted some sort of red and white tent, with a grey spot of a thing hovering above it. No music floated up to them, just the wind.

Crumbelina crossed her arms. “It is a nice view, I suppose, but some bright lights will do that to anything.”

“Yeah, not even the lights can hide how bland and dirty everything is.” Rancis agreed with her, as usual. Of course he would, Rancis would call anything he didn’t like bland, or badly designed, or faultily programmed, even when he hadn’t even seen any of those things over there close up.

Gloyd didn’t see anything too wrong with it, all its stealing of his ideas aside. It wasn’t a view to really appreciate for too long though, with so much more pressing things to deal with. There was a strange. . .it was difficult to even describe it really, a thin cut in the floor, with something silver embedded inside, and it ran all the way along to the front doors. Still rather curious, Gloyd followed it, and the others behind him, but not before they all tied themselves together with the Red Vines he’d brought him with. Not so useless now, were they?

Another not so useless item went up against a group of long cloak wearing ghosts with sharp claws and dark blue masks a few moments later. Jubileena and Crumbelina settled for just batting at them with their hands when they floated too close, and the pop-gun seemed to disperse them somewhat; even though it just went straight through and the cork flopped on its string, they flinched regardless, fading away. A few moments later they all seemed to be gone, and they could get into the house in peace, even if the doors fell down by themselves. They all shuffled in, trying to keep quiet, but they could still hear those things climbing the stairs in a huddle, making their eerie sounds. Gloyd tucked his slightly less useless pop-gun in his jacket pocket for safe keeping.

“Phew, so, we’re in the house now. Where should we hide?”

“We can’t worry about that now. They’ll follow us in, the zo. . .” He felt like he knew what they were, the word, but that was silly. He couldn’t possibly. “ _those things,_ we need to block this door, or trap them at least, to keep them out.” Without really asking Gloyd untied the others from him, using the spare length of Red Vine to create crossing lines of them in front of the corridor, with him ending up on the wrong side, but that could be easily fixed. Through the red lines he could spot a ghost down the corridor, carrying a painting, it looked like it was of an owl. . .

Wait.

What was an ‘owl’? Where did that come from?

He felt like he could remember, something—some—Yes! That was it! All of this, all the z-z- _zomibes_ and ghosts and ghouls and twistedness, it was in his code! To love all things Halloween-y! That’s why he’d always thought up things the others found weird (except for maybe Candlehead or Jubileena, they tried to understand, sometimes) and pumpkins, they must’ve been about Halloween too, and that’s why his birthday was today! Of course, it all made sense now.

So pleased with himself and is discover, Gloyd didn’t hear the others shrieking warnings to him, and didn’t notice a thing until something wrapped around his waist and pulled him away so hard the Red Vine still connected to him snapped, but at least the Zombie Trap stayed up.

 

 He didn’t really know what had grabbed him, just glimpses of a white mask, and something of a gun, a real gun, for an arm, but it must’ve been a normal hand holding him. It was probably four times his height with how high up he was now, and all it did was groan out noise.

Through all the shaking he could see something like a spider, a really giant, really _awesome looking_ (not the time!) spider, tear Crumbelina away from the rest of the group while they were too busy watching him, they might have been calling after him through the Red Vines, but he couldn’t really hear anything. It didn’t matter, they couldn’t just let Crumbelina get taken away like that, no matter how cool the spider.

“No, no, go after Crumbelina, she’s in the house already, she’ll be easier to find! I’ll be fine, really! Go!”

Gloyd didn’t know if they listened, as the thing dragged him out of the house completely. In the cold night air again his fast little breaths formed an icy cloud in front of him. Be calm, stay calm for their sakes too!

He had to stay hopeful. As long as one of them made it out alright, then whatever happened was worth it. He even formed a little toothy grin.

Besides, when up against _him_ , Gloyd Orangeboar, the Halloween themed racer of _Sugar Rush_ , what chance did this thing stand, really?

Why, not a ghost of a chance! Haha!

 

* * *

 

Rancis was expected to react, but how could he, what was there to express upon losing Gloyd and Crumbelina in the space of two seconds? If there was one he didn’t know it.

It took all the strength he had to keep Jubileena from bolting straight into Gloyd’s trap and out the door.

“N-No, stop. If we give up now, what Gloyd did’ll all be for nothing. He-he’s probably fine, Jubileena, y’know nothing can keep Gloyd down, and he’d never just give up. Just you wait; he’ll turn up again before you know it.”

“Did you see that thing, though? It—it was. . .”  Even now Rancis could still see the giant with a gun for an arm, that white slitted mask, and the way it was _on fire_ at the back. It was better not to think about it, for now.

“I know, this game’s throwing everything at us, and Gloyd would want us to fight against everything we can head on, but that—it was behind the trap anyway.” The smaller, paler things had started getting caught of the trap, shambling forward but getting tangled in the Red Vines. Oh, that prankster Gloyd, his traps finally had a use for something important. “Right now, let’s try and find Crumbelina.”

After a while of slapping at ghosts and following along that embedded line on the floor they came upon a long corridor with holes dotted along it, and one step made stubby hands come grabbing from both sides.

“Eek, what’re they?” Jubileena clapped her hands over her ears, though looking again made Rancis realise she was pushing her pigtails down where they might not reach. “How can we get past this?”

“I’ll go check it out.” He inched closer to the corridor, until. . .oh. “It’s fine, Jubileena, the holes are way higher than we are. They’re for the Good Guys in this game, I guess.” He waved at her from deeper in the hall, just so she could see the height difference. It seemed this particular monster would be of no trouble for them, but not before the hand could latch onto his pop-gun, pulling it through the wall. “On second thought, make sure you duck a little!”

At the end of one path it split into two, one leading into a longer hall, the other a door drenched in Kool-Aid, and what looked like a kitchen beyond it.

“Rancis, spiders can’t open doors! Especially not if it was carrying Crumbelina, so it must have just gone straight this way.” It looked like a thin, push-open door, but surely the spider wasn’t smart enough to know that.

“Hehe, of course, right, we’ll go that way then. But you don’t know, it could be a spider that has _hands_!” He flexed his fingers for emphasis.

 

“Ew stop, Rancis, that would be even grosser! A giant normal looking spider is bad enough!” Beneath her hysterics there was a tiny grin pulling in the corner her mouth. Rancis allowed a smile too; Gloyd would have been— _would be_ happy he’d cheered her up, even just the smallest bit.

Taking that second of happiness for what it was worth, the now duo continued along their meandering in the Haunted House, and their search for Crumbelina.

* * *

 

Even when she thought about it very hard she could not form more than a very rough guess, and the guess only told her something very shameful indeed. Ten minutes, maybe, that was all, but inside it felt far longer, but at least the spider was gone, skittering back to wherever it had come from and just leaving her here.

Crumbelina would have sat up, if she could, and only wriggled her toes so they did not go numb, and settled for rolling around enough to both lose her hat and hit a wall. At least it had not covered her head and feet. Perseverance and more than a little bit of blind kicking rewarded her with being able to sit up slightly, just enough so she could see exactly where she was.

Most of the house looked the same, and being stuck in a corridor would not help in her figuring out where she could possibly be, after all, she had only seen the one or two corridors even before she was. . .she supposed ‘kidnapped’ was the correct word, even after being left.

A sudden clattering made her start. What could that be? If any of those small spiders came along she could at least try and stop them from stealing her hat, but not if one of the giant ones came back. But, oh, how she loved that hat, it was a part of her as anything else, how could she just watch it get taken away ( _like that more giant than the spider thing had snatched Gloyd away_ ), even in this state? Or maybe it was something even worse. . . and what if it had got to Rancis and Jubileena too before her? That simply was not fair, she would rather they abandon her, than waste time and put themselves in even more danger, or at least, that was the more noble approach. Shame she was far from the noblest of them, even in racing.

“Crumbelina, are you down here?” That was Rancis’s voice!

“Yes, yes, I’m over here!” The little slip in what was _proper_ speech went unnoticed, not with the way she heard their footsteps drawing ever closer. Within a moment Rancis was there, knelt down and making sure she was ok, while Jubileena gushed about how happy she was that she was safe. He dusted off her hat, securing it firmly on her head once again. “There, now you look like Crumbelina again.”

“Thank you very much, Rancis,” He only flashed his ‘it was nothing’ smile, he was so adorable when he did that. “and Jubileena too. I knew you two would not leave without me.”  She didn’t see the edge of the pop-gun in Rancis’s pocket, and briefly wondered what had happened to it, but she was so happy to see him she did not care in the slightest.

“Now, let’s get that webby stuff off you.” Rancis tried in vain to tear through the web, pulling it and tying it in knots, and in a ditch attempt trying to bite it as if it was white gummy string instead, before giving up and scratching the bits of it off his tongue. “Well I’m not leaving you. If I can’t get though this stuff then—then we’ll just carry you!”

With a bit of effort the two of them hoisted her above their heads, walking slowly and carefully, but with the sense that they had an idea where they were going. Crumbelina sure hoped so, with nothing to see but pieces of ceiling, again, for even more minutes, except for that time where they had pulled her though a window and she could see that white disc thing in the sky again. Huh, they must’ve been outside, _again_.

They set her down so she could waddle and hop along. Rancis pointed, with his left hand, of course, to a large cube looking thing made of stone with slanted doors and a gap that just might squeeze them in.

“We’ll hide in there.” There was no silver-rail-thing in the floor anymore, and what she might have mistook for it looked like it might have been a stream instead. It was pointless to think about it, and she padded forward into it, barely managing to not overbalance with each step.

It looked a little like a house on the inside, like their own little gumdrops and chocolate blocks of houses back home, but there was no point in thinking about that right now. Everything that was almost normal was twisted someway, beyond what was normal and right, with its spots of Kool-aid on the wall and its table nearly as tall as them with a jagged slice at one end. Whoever lived here, they surely weren’t anything like them, even more so than they would have ever thought, compared to what they’d seen so far.

The trio kept themselves huddled in the corner of the room, not even daring to sit on the bed, getting sprinkled in dust and the white powder that covered most of the floor, clinging to each other in a pretty unbecoming manner, but Crumbelina didn’t mind it too much, they were all they had now. Who knew what had become of anyone else, of Adorabeezle, Torvald, or Taffyta, or. . .everyone, really. All at once being on the Roster didn’t seem all that important as it had been a few hours before. Perhaps not placing for Monday wasn’t all that bad after all, compared to this, whatever all of this could come to be known after it was over, or if there was anyone left _to_ tell about it afterwards.

Rancis looked like he wanted to say something, once or twice, but he never did, only staying silent, and what was there to say, really? Gloyd . . . he might have thought that focusing on getting through things no matter the cost was important, but how could they just ignore what had happened?

After what must have been another fifteen minutes of awkward silences Jubileena suddenly shot up, scrambling to her feet.

“I need to go.”

“Jubileena you can’t-- cannot go! We need to remain all in one place, in _this_ place, where we can stay safe for as long as possible. We have no weapons now, so. . . ”

“I can’t stay. I stick right out,” she motioned towards her bright red clothes and hat and hair. “you can blend in here, and no one will see you. You can’t run anywhere like that, and Rancis can look after you. You have a better chance of not being noticed if I’m not here. I. . .I’d better go, so you two can keep safe. I--I’ll even keep an eye out for Gl-Gl-Gloyd too, if I find him I’ll be sure to tell you, somehow. I promise!” 

Rancis tried to grab her arm, and Crumbelina would have done the same if she could, but she only stepped backwards, closer to the doors.

“I’ll find the others too; I know I’ll find them. I need to stay positive, like he said. Yep, I’ll be fine. S-See you.” And with that she had already dashed away, and they heard a faint splashing where she must have reached the stream. They might have done more besides the verbal protests, if Rancis was not preoccupied in keeping her comfy while being still wrapped up in web, and Rancis could not leave her to give chase.

Crumbelina tried to keep a brave face. If Jubileena didn’t want to be caught she could far outrun them, though she never really drew attention to it, and if she was so stubborn then they could not hope to keep up and force her to stay. It might have not been all bad, out there, if those good guys or the others were still around.

 

Maybe she could just. . .outrun everything, and she’d be fine. It was more than what Crumbelina could hope to do right now, so that hope would have to count for helping Jubi fare well, instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, sorry about taking so long everyone, seriously. I PROMISE, I’m gonna get the next chapter up SOON. *starts typing really fast* 
> 
> Hey look, even the zombies are getting in on the party :) Them wearing hats is a reference to an Easter egg in the actual game, where if you reload five times on the loading screen of the Haunted House, then all the zombies in the level will wear different hats (pigtail wig, afro, pirate hat, blue and white cat-in-the-hat style hat, party hat. . .there might be more I’m not sure).


	5. Royal Business, With Cake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter~ I had a uni assignment yesterday, but now I should be able to write a little faster, for real.
> 
> It’s time to see what King Candy’s up to again, also, I’ll tell you who those dinosaurs were from the last KC chapter, even though no one guessed ^^;
> 
> -The four dinosaurs are from Trog(!), a cute little Pacman style claymation game from 1990, Rex (red), Bloop (blue), Spike (yellow), and Gwen (pink). You control one of the dinosaurs trying to collect eggs while these one-eyed cavemen called Trog try and eat you, but if you collect a pineapple you can turn into a giant T-Rex and eat them.  
> \- The 2 pairs of the same dinosaurs, but from different games, are Bub and Bob from Bubble Bobble, and Bub and Bob from Bust-a-Move again, the sequel to its puzzle spinoff.  
> \- The two from different games who are badguys, is Wrong-Way from Q*Bert, who was mentioned earlier in the fic, and Fygar from Dig Dug, who had a cameo in the movie too, and they both have wings.

Ten minutes after the wonderful opportunity had walked to her treasure hunting evening, Miss von Schweetz was busy scurrying back to the race track, her pride and joy hoisted up around her waist.

 

The Likety Split, MK 1. For less than a year’s work it sure was something if she did say so herself. It was pretty hollow, sure, but that made it super light and easy to move. One day it would have something like peddles, rather than needing to push it along through the bottom, or maybe even a real engine! But she couldn’t waste this chance, nope, not one bit, and it needed its own chance to actually get used on the _actual_ race track. She could do this.

 

Besides, if she waited they’d all come back and take it away, the coin, not her kart, of course, even if it was a little different. But they would probably think she was doing something wrong by making her own kart and that’d make them hate her even more because they’d think she was trying to ruin the game like they always did, but they were wrong! No, she hadn’t any time for that; she had to get this done _now_.

 

“Hey! I’d like to play!”

 

She called up to the Scoreboard Jumbotron, any announcement of the Random Roster Race would make it chatty, and whenever the _others_ wanted to play mini-games they always shouted up to it. Why would she be any different, glitch or not?

 

“Pay to play~ One Gold Coin~” Said the automated voice of the announcer, and the coin spring slowly slid lower. 

 

Vanellope took wiping over it with her sleeve. It was a bit smaller than it should be, but how could a spring know the difference between it and a real coin? King Candy never said it had to be his type of coins, just a gold coin, and this was gold.

 

“C’mon, Carnival Coin-thingy, you can do it!”

 

Chewing on her jacket tassels and crossing all eight of her fingers, she dropped the coin onto the spring.

 

It sprung up, hit the other spring and. . .

 

“Vanellope von Schweetz! Entered for: TIME TRIAL~”

 

 

All in all, things were going pretty well. Sticky seemed to be taking well to her burger, though still a little apprehensive. Candy was great, but there was so much else out there, and Swizzle was determined to see all of it, even if the others never thought there was much point in leaving their game. Maybe eventually Sticky could appreciate it too. Though it could be a while yet until they had finished eating, there was no harm in ordering some more food in advance (all that queuing to get the table even with a reservation could certainly work up an appetite), and Swizzle began looking over the menu again.

 

It was just as Swizzle was contemplating what to order next that the waiter appeared. Not the chef from earlier, instead it was a small blond man – about King Candy’s height by the looks of it-  in loose blue dungarees, a red and orange shirt and odd coloured shoes. He had strange blue circles on his cheeks, and a stripy, Beard Papa-ish hat of two different blues, and pinned to the front was an employee nametag reading ‘Charlie’. Gliding along the floor, and balancing all the plates very well considering his size, he slipped all of them onto the table opposite in the correct places. That woman with the white hair and whiter skin ‘aww’ed at the sight of the little waiter, saying how he was the cutest of something she had ever seen and patting him on the head. They continued talking for a while longer.

 

Swizzle couldn’t remember seeing him before, even if this was only his second visit to BurgerTime since he wanted to spend it with Sticky. Maybe he just hadn’t been on that particular shift the last time he was here, and he worked at the game just like the Chef did, no matter how out of place he looked.

 

Wanting to order food anyway, Swizzle called him over.

 

“Good evening, would you like to order anything else tonight, sir?” Being called sir was so funny. Swizzle knew someone like Rancis would come here all the time if he knew about that.

 

“Hi there. I’d like to order some vanilla and mint choc-chip ice-cream, with lots of hundreds and thousands, and, Sticky, would you like something else?”

 

Sticky paused as she was about to take a bite out of her burger, putting it back down.

 

“Huh, hm. . .please could I have some mint ice-cream? It’d only be proper because of who I’m dressed-up as, after all.” Ah, yes, her Halloween costume. Her Pixie Stick wand sat on edge of the table, and her mint wings still poked out a little behind her. She’d took the whole idea very well, it was nice to be around someone so adaptable.

 

“Ok, that’s everything. Do you work here full-time, Mister Charlie? I don’t think you’ve served us before.”

 

The waiter shook his head with a soft little grin.

 

“No sir, I’m just a temp, but I am very happy to have a job here. It can get very boring with no game to go to, and Mr Pepper is an old friend of mine. He’s very sweet, he loves having so many people visit every day.” He wrote down the orders on his notepad. “Well, it was nice talkin’ to you, but I’d best leave you to it and get back to work. I will be right back with your food in about ten minutes. We’re very busy today, is this ok?”

 

When Swizzle nodded the temporary waiter tucked his pad under his arm and wandered off.

 

On the newly served table across from them, Swizzle could see all the dinosaurs chattering away, while one of them clutching an egg began climbing up the table and reaching for a slice of cake on the other side. That man with the sickly skin’s arm came between them.

 

“Cake. . .bad. . .” 

 

The lady only giggled and eased his arm away, lightly, without any effort at all.

 

 “Haha. Oh, _Monsieur_ Cyril, they’re only dinosaurs, they’ll be fine. Carnie has no trouble with it back home; I don’t see how this can be any different.” Using the same hand, she felt around the table a little, before finding the plate with her fingers and pushing it closer to the blue dinosaur that had climbed up. “Let them eat cake. Hm, that sounds weird, who said that? _Comme c’est_ _é_ _strange. . ._ ”

 

They carried on in this way, the dinosaurs with wings fluttering about, and the eight of them around the table making a great deal of noise. It was kinda distracting, actually, but with it being Halloween, what could he have wanted? He didn’t mind the excitement, it was all in good fun, but he didn’t want it ruining things for Sticky.

 

“Are you sure you don’t want to move?”

 

“It’s ok, Swizzle, it’s nice that everyone’s having fun here.”

 

Well, at least she was still happy. Charlie came back with their ice-cream, even though Sticky wasn’t done with her burger, and she set it off to the side. It wouldn’t melt _that_ fast, so it was fine. Even though it was a little impolite, Swizzle just chanced a single spoonful.

 

“I can’t believe he wouldn’t let us in. We’re practically family!” A voice called out from behind.

 

“Oh, I doubt that.” A rather sarcastic, if calmer voice, replied. “A fifteen year game gap and just the same company don’t make us the best of friends, especially not after just being plugged in, but he was only doing his job. Besides, it’s pretty obvious we’re too young to drink.”

 

“But—but—we’ll _never_ be twenty one, that’s just cruel!” The pair of voices walked by. One was a boy- probably about seventeen if Swizzle were to guess- dressed in a red fleece jacket and jeans. There was a strap running down across from his shoulder, attached to something hanging from his waist.  The other was a girl about the same age, with black hair tied in a high ponytail, and a green top that was _way_ too short considering the season, and denim shorts likewise.

 

“It’s alright, there’s plenty of beer and stuff at home, I’m sure Umlaut’ll let us have some. C’mon, let’s just get some ice-cream here and then explore someplace else.”

 

“Yeah, I guess you’re--” The boy caught sight of him, and stopped. “Hey, you’re one’er those guys from Candy—no, _Sugar Rush,_ right?”

 

“Yep, I’m Swizzle, and this is my friend, Sticky.”

 

“Nice to meet you two. Funny seeing you here.”

 

“I haven’t seen you before, which game are you from?”

 

“You-- you don’t know? Ha, I guess we look too normal! Isn’t it obvious? We’re from CarnEvil.” Now that was just silly. King Candy had described the game as veryscary indeed from what he’d heard, as Halloween should be, but there was nothing scary about teenagers. The boy must have seen his less than believing expression, and laughed it off. “Hey now, don’t be like that, we don’t work there or nothin’! We’re the Good Guys. I’m Jacob, Player 1,” He tapped on the green visor covering his left eye, though Swizzle had no idea what it could be for. “and Lisa here, is Player 2.” Lisa gave a tiny wave, raising her purple-pink gun that hanged at her waist so they could see, and she had a same pink-purple plastic covering her right eye. “I think when she’s not playing she’ll give me the other visor, since they clip together as glasses. Not too sure yet, we’ll hafta wait ‘til tomorrow. We have another friend too, but she decided to stay behind and get to know everyone first.”

 

“It’s all very exciting, I can’t wait!” Lisa gushed, fiddling with her gun and whispering how about how it didn’t work yet.

 

“Hey, why aren’t you at the party like your friends? I hear it’s gonna be _awesome_. ”

 

“We’d already arranged to come here. I’m sure it will be very fun thoug--”

 

“—Don’t worry yourself, Gwen dearie, he’s in a block of ice.” Again the voice of that woman burst from the other table. “He won’t be any harm now; if he was we would have employed him years ago, hah!”

 

Jacob tensed up at the sound, and it looked to Swizzle like he might have shivered a little. Her voice did have a weird undertone to it, so he supposed it was understandable.

 

“Brr, that sounds like—wait--” He turned around. “Marie! It _is_ you! _W_ -What are you doing here? You’re supposed to--”

 

“Whatever do you mean by that?” She huffed, sitting a lot straighter. “Umlat told me to look at some other games, and Wrong-Way led me here. I’ve met Monsieur Cyril, he’s from a game like ours, and these dinosaurs, some of them were from Trog, you know Trog, right? And Charlie, he’s--”

 

“The party started ages ago, you’re really late.”

 

“It did? Why didn’t you say something! Hambone and Chef Zombie can’t run that place by themselves!”

 

“We thought you were still in the game. Go on, if you hurry no one will have made it to your place yet.”

 

 “Hmph.” She pushed herself up from the table, turning to the others. “I’m sorry everyone, I need to go. I hope we can see each other again sometime. _Au revoir!_ ”  The lady blew a little kiss to them, and something in her mouth caught the light for a second. She stood up without moving her legs at all, and smoothed her dress out before sweeping along the floor towards the exit. Hm, there was something in her hand, something shiny and grey—WHAT?! She’d been holding an _axe_ the entire time!

 

By the time Swizzle had figured out how he was supposed to react to something like that, he felt something poking at him, or rather, someone, namely Jacob.

 

“Uh, hey, Swizzle. . .well, it looks kinda crowded over there, so. . . can we guys join you?” 

 

“Yeah, don’t see why not.” Without needing telling twice the duo quickly plonked down on the seats beside them.

 

It seemed whether or not they went to that game King Candy kicked up so much fuss about, one way or another, through good guys or bad, it was going to come to them regardless. 

 

 

Over the course of the last hour King Candy guessed he must’ve been learning some things, like not trusting random games just to appease his subjects, and right now he was pretty sure of something, oh yes.

 

“I HATE zombies, zombiesth!”

 

“Is-- is that what they’re called, Sire?”

 

“Yesth! Yeth it isth!”

 

Really he probably already knew that he hated zombies. He’d met quite a few back in the Old Days, or more recently, maybe a year or so ago, before, all this? Yeah, there was one, he had a weird name, and talked just zombies should, but he was just a Bad Guy, and what did he care for Bad Buys, even back then? 

 

 _THIS_ WHOLE _GAME IS BAD GUYS!_   

Exactly, why was he here, running through rooms and corridors without any purpose, slipping on blood and who knew what, following along the rail that was drilled through this Haunted House even though it would probably just make him even more lost?

 

He just carried on running.

 

Shirtless zombies with rope belts and their ridiculous hats weren’t really the problem here, not with these _ghosts_ and their claws being particularly fond of--

 

“Hey, let go of Thour Bill!” A quick swipe of his kart-horn stick knocked the _three smaller green ghosts_ out of them pretty good, but they were so fast through the air it was impossible to try and fight them all off. Stupid respawning! He had a good mind to just carry Sour Bill or try and hide him, but he thought better of it.

 

_Why was this a good idea again? Oh, yeah, IT WASN’T!_

 

It _seemed_ a good idea at the time. After roaming kartless for a while after leaving Rickety Town, he and Sour Bill had noticed the Haunted House, and with no idea where they were going it seemed sensible enough to. Really, how worse could it have been than losing his kart and watching it get eaten less than an hour earlier?

 

There was a coffin on the way up, marked ‘tickets’, how audacious, that it required tokens to enter the carnival, but they still wanted you to buy tickets as well! 

 

The zombies were keeping away from the door. There had been a lot of zigzags of Red Vines across the door, which meant Gloyd was in there. Finally, _someone!_ He hadn’t seen a single racer yet (less said about Candlehead, she was a lost cause anyway) _, w_ hich didn’t bode well in any scenario. He didn’t really expect much of children, but seriously, his racers had better be competent enough to make out in enough pieces _to_ race.

 

Eventually, the hole in the floor led them to a corridor with holes in the wall too, and they had to wait for the Victorian style car to pass along the rail before they could try and pass through it. 

 

The hands might cause problems too. Those grabbing hands out of all the holes in both sides of the corridor. They looked a little too high to get to him properly, maybe he’d be fine.

 

Halfway through a hand snatched his crown right off his head, but didn’t pull it into the wall like he expected.

 

“Oh, hiya Rick. It’s me!” The hand gave him a pat on the head, setting his crown back down. “Can you believe the Boss let me get a sideline here as a Grabby? Isn’t that great? I guess Miss Marie’s kinda understaffed right now. . .Rick, you listening? Just ‘cos I’m only--” The hand pulled away into the wall, and a face appeared in the hole instead. It was one of those elves from Rickety Town. It scowled as it saw him. “Hey—you’re not Rick! Go away!” It stuck its real arm out of the hole and shooed him away.

 

“Why did it think I was someone else? Especially someone from a different level?”

 

“Um, Sire. . . I think it was your. . .hat.” King Candy raised an eyebrow.

 

“My what?” He reached to see what exactly was wrong with his crown, but—it felt weird. . .wait. It was just an orange paper box hat with yellow sticks in it. “Where did my crown go?!”

 

“Back in Rickety Town, Sire. One of the teenagers took it, and put his hat there instead.”

 

“Rick thtole my crown?!” All of the other teenage zombies (thinking back, yeah, that grey skin, they were zombies too) seemed to adore ‘Rick’- it was probably Rick who did it. Considering their names, Rick was pretty normal in comparison. . .

 

“I tried to tell you when we were running away, but you said. . .”

 

“I’ll get it back, thomehow. But first, let’th get out of here.” Even when he just let go of the hat it just floated up and latched itself on his head again, since his real crown was attached in such a way. For now it seemed he was stuck with it.

 

Not a moment after they had stepped into another hall that a very large creature in ripped overalls and his face covered in a white mask stamped out from one end. He was unbelievably tall and bulky, it reminded him of- yes, that person- from Back Then. All it did was shout nonsense, maybe even dumber than Ralph, then. They’d probably get along.

 

Oh good, another zombie in a hat. A pumpkin hat…

 

That hat! It was--

 

“Not Gloyd! Gloyd wath—he wasth on the rothter on Monday!” Well, that was two down, for sure. That meant, there was only eleven of them left, not counting Swizzle and Sticky, and there needed to be nine of them to race!

 

From the gun that was grafted onto his arm at the elbow came skulls that _exploded._ He needed to be careful!

 

Obviously the didn’t want him going that way, so he just turned tail, dashing into a kitchen, drenched in blood wherever it could get, naturally. The zombies were busy cutting up things that King Candy didn’t fancy considering, while the one in a chef’s hat checked the microwave on the counter (yes, very Victorian).

 

“I don’t have time for thith!” He just snatched up Sour Bill and continued along to find the closest exit he could. He could feel the blood covering the floor seeping into his lovely shoes, and for a second he envied Sour Bill for not wearing any. Hopefully it wouldn’t stain, but considering everything else it was hardly a hope at all.

 

Following the rail again (what else was there?), it soon led them to a place up some stairs that split into three. The walls were plastered in gaudy, unfitting wallpaper and a few paintings. One of them seemed to be of a posh looking woman playing the harp, but King Candy didn’t recognise her from anywhere, it probably didn’t matter.

 

The wall behind the painting folded down, and revealed even more stairs leading to the rooftop. There was a giant red and white tent next door, but King Candy hadn’t seen a path leading to there. That place was probably even worse than here. A dark zeppelin with dark red _wings_ floated lazily above it, but he hadn’t much time to think about the weirdness of it. 

 

He leant forward to try and see what was written on the tent’s side, but without any warning a flock—hoard of bats started pestering him, flapping way too close and hitting him with their wings. Brandishing his stick at them was a far better choice than risking getting bitten, even if they avoided most of his swings. At least they weren’t as smart as the ghosts, none trying to carry Sour Bill off.

 

Careful not to run his way off the roof, King Candy stumbled along into a spare room on the roof, finding a parked car, its rail leading outside again.

 

“Are you sure we should get in this car sir, you saw what happened to the one up front.” Ah, yes, that first car of the ride, that had snapped off its rail and set on fire, somehow.

 

“Yeth, Thour Bill, we’re on the roof, there’th no where we _can_ go. This car can take uth thomwhere lesth…precariouth.” There never felt a safer place than inside a car, for him at least.

 

The moment they had sat down the car jerked into life on its rail, a little too smoothly. The single lamp serving as a headlight pushed the doors open, and it slid forward, completely ignoring the curve in the rail…

 

…Was it not connected to the rail?!

 

And there were the zombies again, holding onto the back of the car, as if to try and drag him out. What were the options, getting eaten by zombies or falling off the top of a house in this car and hoping for the best? This game could eat his kart, and maybe Sour Bill, but it wasn’t gonna eat him. But he really shouldn’t have been considering such things.

 

“Get away! Let. Go!” Striking one in the face it let go, and the car overbalanced, tipping off the roof. 

 

“Ouch!” saying ouch was good, if he could say ouch he wasn’t dead, at least.

 

The dark-ride-car had crashed squarely into an open grave, probably one the zombies had dug for him. Its grave stone sat flat a few feet away. 

 

REST IN PIECES

 

Clambering out through the front of the car (Thank Mod for no windows), he tried to assess the damage. Even trying to stand up ended up with him flat on his face. Oh-- He couldn’t very well walk on a twisted—sprained— _broken_ ankle. No more running, they needed to find somewhere to hide, and fast. About twenty feet away sat a square-ish tomb, with its doors slightly ajar. Even if just for a few minutes, he needed to rest this leg if he wanted to make it anywhere else tonight. Who knows, maybe there would even be someone who survived in there.

 

When he listened really hard, he could hear something like splashing, like footsteps, but why would he be imagining even worse things coming from the stream, with everything else in this game against him?

 

“Oh, how could I be this late…?” An ethereal voice floated on the air. It sounded like a woman, but he ignored it.

 

While continuing his hopping towards the tomb using his car horn stick much like his decorative Candy Cane cane back home, Sour Bill in front helping the best he could, someone appeared from the hill.

 

A very tall lady, clothed in a pink poofy dress with three pale blue trims, spattered with red spots all over. No prizes for guessing. Even her soft pink gloves were stained red. And yet here hair- probably wig- was completely clean, if covered in a few black specks that were probably for decoration. It was that woman from the painting, so this was her level, he guessed. Even ludicrously oversized breasts inside her corset aside, she was rather pretty, shame about the face, with her fangs and her eyes without pupils, white as her skin, and the giant jagged scar across her neck. A zombie and ghost and vampire all at the same time. King Candy wasn’t sure what to call her. She reminded him very faintly of that Sorceress from Back Then, but it wasn’t the best time to be thinking about that.

 

_“Eh bien, qu'avons-nous ici?”_

In vain he tried to shuffle back, dragging his foot along the ground, while Sour Bill hid behind him. Her heeled feet didn’t touch the ground, and he could see her gentle bobbing in the air as she approached.

“L-l-listen, Misth, I’m jutht paththing through, I’m lostht and—Aah!” Axe. An axe. She had an _axe!_

 

She flashed a very toothy smile, and bent at the hip to get far too close a look at him, the axe gleaming in the moonlight at her side

_“Bon soir, Petit Roi.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> King Candy took the ‘legit’ path through the Haunted House, as in how it generally is played in the game, rather than Gloyd’s group, who after Gloyd got taken down, went the path away from the kitchen, where Hambone: The Revenge usually is. I guess I needed to split parts of the Haunted House so KC could explore a part different to the others.
> 
> Yes, I feel bad for the cake joke, because Marie Antoinette didn’t even say that, because she cared very much for the poor, and because Evil Marie isn’t supposed to be the real one anyway. It’s kinda confusing, because the Haunted House level is the only level that tries to make up stuff even in the context of the game, as the level itself is a real dark ride/ghost train (hence the rail, and ticket booth), so you don’t really know what was part of the ride, and what is real, such as the painting of her as a young girl (which is a real painting just edited to have the girl holding an axe behind her back). I think that might have been a parody part she played before the carnival became undead, and she just kept that look afterwards and adopted that persona full-time. 
> 
> It’s a little hard trying to write Evil Marie’s dialogue, since she does have lines in the game but whenever I play the game the sounds lags so bad I can’t tell when she’s speaking, and even if I could I wouldn’t be able to understand it because of how broken the sound is. Since my laptop can’t run the game any better than it tries to, I decided to give up ^^; The only other thing I heard her say once was ‘How dare you’ , and even then that might have been me hearing things because of the glitchy sound ^^;
> 
> I guess now would be an ok time to explain how I’ve decided to have the first person-ness of this game work. Rather than them having a First Person Shooter like Hero’s Duty does (I don’t really understand why Hero’s Duty chose to have such a giant screen, in a light gun game the bigger the screen the harder the game will be since you have to move your arms more to reach more parts of the screen), I decided that they would just have a visor that the gamers can see out of, since the characters show up in the game’s intro in using their actual character models and full CG, so they must actually exist rather than just being generic soldiers. I also had to choose what Lisa looked like, since besides the girl you rescue in the game, there’s two other girls in the wagon, one with brown hair and one with black hair and they’re both wearing green, and another guy. Since most of the internet ‘info’ (there really is no evidence) say that player 2 is a girl, I chose between one of the two.


	6. King Candy's Technicolor Freak Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Giant chapter, what the hell are you? How did you happen?
> 
> Well, it’s time to see how the Sugar Rush racers are faring now. Yep, no King Candy until next chapter, because I’m mean like that :3

With her two friends off on their adventure Outside, she had nothing better to do, and so she had taken to wandering around, speaking a rhyme she felt she shouldn’t have known. She didn’t remember ever hearing it before.

 

_Welcome to CarnEvil, it’s visiting your town._

_No, that’s not the walking dead,_

_That’s just a silly clown!_

_It opens every midnight,_

_and closes before the dawn._

_Your mommy may come look for you,_

_But by then it will be gone!_

 

“That’s a funny song, but you make it sound kinda nice.”

“. . .Oh, hello there! Who might you be? Don’t be shy now, I don’t bite.”

* * *

 

“. . .? What a lovely name. It’s wonderful to meet someone new; ever since this party started I haven’t seen a single soul. Are you having fun tonight?”

The racer had ended up here, somehow. She didn’t really know how, actually. After things got a little strange and everyone started running everywhere she’d gone exploring, and now she’d met this older girl pushing a pink stand on wheels.

 

“Yeah, I’m happy it stopped raining, because, obviously--” She motioned above her, and the older girl seemed to understand completely, chuckling a little with a nod. “I know you, you’re. . .” She remembered leafing through the book from her Welcome Bag earlier, all that walking without looking had led her here in the first place. “You’re Betty, aren’t you?”

 

“Oh, you know me? That’s so sweet. How did you--?” Betty spotted the book under her arm. “Am I in the programme?” She showed Betty the picture in the book, marked under the ‘visitors’ section. “Yep, that’s me, Betty Quinn. Huh, that’s a little weird, but it’s nice that They put me in there. So, what brings you so far away from the carnival?” It did seem pretty far away, the area behind Betty was a lot brighter, yet somehow more lifeless looking than the rest of this place. If she was Betty she wouldn’t be staying so close to somewhere like this by choice.

 

“I’m. . . kinda lost, actually. All my friends ran away.”

 

“Oh, that’s a mighty shame, I hope you can find them again, this place can be pretty confusing. I’m usually the one doing the running, but my friends’ll always come ‘n’ save me. Well, normally that’s what’d, happen, I think; Kinda hard to remember what’s supposed to happen when we’re still new. But my friends have gone exploring tonight, so I decided to stay here and, well--” She waved in the direction of her pink cart and yellow, pink as her shirt and yellow as her hair, so much that the large, red wooden X strapped to her back overbalanced her, and she needed to adjust it before it pulled her over. “Thought I’d do something to help out.” The racer thought it looked kinda heavy, she couldn’t imagine carrying something like that around all the time.

 

She caught something out the corner of her eye, a speck of orange floating on the wind. Maybe it was one of those leaves, that had all seemed to disappear after everyone had ran away.

 

Betty lifted her hand for it to rest on, whispering a tiny “Hiya” to it. It looked like it had wings, very thin orange wings with black patterns on them, and six legs. The racer didn’t have any clue as to what it could be, and tilted her head.

 

“What’s that?”

 

“Huh, don’t you have bugs back home?” The racer remembered bugs, those gummy bugs that Gloyd was always going into the Candy Tree Forest to catch in jars to scare Taffyta and Crumbelina and anyone else he could.

 

“I guess so, but none of them’re like this.”

 

“Well, it’s The Monarch Butterfly.”

 

“Butterfly? Is it a Good Guy, like you?”

 

“It’s not either, really, it just lives wherever it pleases. It’s rather sweet, ain’t it, in a place like this? It did seem a lot brighter than the rest of the things here, it was pretty cute.

 

It glided very softly over to her, landing on her shoulder, what felt like it could either be its tongue or its nose tickling her cheek, and she found herself giggling a little at the feeling.

 

“Aw, it’s taken a likin’ to you, I can see why, or maybe it’s because. . .” Betty pondered for a moment, and settled upon narrowing her eyes with a grin. “You’ve been _There_ , haven’t you? Well, I guess that’d be the first place you’d go on a tour of this place.”

 

She didn’t really know what Betty was talking about, but if the butterfly liked her for whatever reason she didn’t mind it. She would need to tell everyone about them when she saw them again, wherever they were. . .

 

Her shoulders sagging with her sigh, the Butterfly fluttered off, the wind not bothering it in the least. They watched it, a bright orange spot in the dark, and Betty smiled. “Go after it, maybe it’ll be good luck. You should probably go back anyway; the Walls are here, so there’s not much t’see, maybe you can find some of your friends? But hey, since you’re here, would you like some cotton candy? I’m sure you can catch up to it in a sec.” Already Betty started preparing some on a stick from her boxy cart on wheels.

 

The racer being who she was, and where she was from, how could she possibly say no to something like that?

 

* * *

 

When Nougetsia thought about parties, in her brief experience of them, she didn’t really think about being stuck in a tiny box for the better part of two hours. At least being stuck with someone was better than being all alone, especially since it was Torvald. She couldn’t imagine being stuck with someone who wasn’t a recolour too; they probably wouldn’t stick around long enough _to_ get stuck with her anyway.

 

Torvald was snoring a little, having grown more than a little bored with hiding, while she was being something that could be considered being a lookout, if she could see anything at all.

 

In her own boredom she had been shuffling the square cards she’d found on the wooden floor nonstop for a while now. Nougetsia couldn’t read anything on them, and some four were cut out into stranger shapes by the feel of them, but she guessed they must have been the things you were supposed to shoot in this Shooting Gallery, but what did she know?

 

Maybe hiding in here was very cowardly, while everyone else ran into what didn’t bear thinking about outside, they were safe, until it was over.

 

A sharp breeze seeped in through the cracks in the side of the Shooting Gallery, and Nougetsia shivered, hugging her jacket tighter around her. The breeze carried a voice on it, too.

 

“Thank you for letting me in, what a coincidence you were here.” Such an echoing, horrible voice, no matter how gentle it was trying to be.

 

She shook Torvald’s shoulder.

 

“Hey, c’mon wake up.”

 

Torvald just shuffled further away.

 

“. . .No, gotta sleep. On the Roster tomorrow.”

 

“It was no trouble.” The second voice was somehow even worse. So deep and dark, she had never heard anything like if before. If the there were some stories of really high pitched voices breaking glass candy, then this was a voice that would fix any of it within fifty feet with just a word.

 

 “Tomorrow’s Sunday, Tovald. Psst, Psst!”

 

“Gotta beat. . . Minty. . .”

 

“Torvald, wake up!” Trying to whisper loud enough to sound urgent, but not loud enough for _them_ to hear was a line too thin to really gauge.

 

“Huh, hm, what? What?” Torvald very lazily sat up, rubbing at her eye with one hand and stifling a yawn with the other.

 

“There’s some people outside. Listen.” Straight away Torvald seemed to remember exactly where she was and where she’d fallen asleep, sitting up far straighter and keeping as still as possible, covering her mouth with both hands.

 

“Well, I had better get back Home before I start being missed, _monseuir_.”

 

“Ok then, Marie, have fun.” It was silent after that for a minute. They didn’t hear any more footsteps, but they hoped that they were just that quiet, and that they were gone now.

 

“What should we do now?” She whispered.

 

“Let’s just wait. We don’t wanna hafta get into a fight with whatever’s outside.”

 

“Now, to look for those missing Welcome Bags.” That deep voice from before said to itself, far too close for comfort. It’s footsteps upon the tiny set of stairs that led to the Shooting Gallery echoed in, very quietly. It seemed surprising light on its feet for whatever it was.

 

Before they had time to even try and scramble to their feet someone opened the door. It was a pale, bald little thing with a long white cloak with frills at the top, with bobbles on the front. He was smothered in make-up, way more than Taffyta ever used, all white with messy red around his lips and black around his eyes, and sporting a big red nose. He couldn’t have been any taller than them, and as he opened his mouth to maybe say something (and catching a glint of his ever so pointed teeth) they burst forward from their huddling, trampling over him and dashing out of the Shooting Gallery with Torvald pretty much dragging her, and never once looking back, screaming all the way.

 

After running long enough for the Shooting Gallery to only show up as a speck in the distance, and the little creature seemed to have no interest in pursuing them, the duo came to a stop beside a large stone wall. The next matter of business was finding another place to hide, but before they could even speak a word in between catching their breath a noise blared out from inside the wall.

 

It sounded like. . . a vuvuzela?

 

“Hey! Is that Citrusella?” It seemed plausible. Citrusella had brought a vuvuzela with her for the party. They hadn’t seen or heard from the blueberry themed racer since everything began. They had fully intended to let her hide with them, a recolour just like them, they could have stuck together, but they just hadn’t seen her at the time.

 

Torvald nodded.

 

“She must be in trouble, we gotta go save her! We can’t keep on hiding if our friends are out here fighting.” And with that they started inching their way along the wall to find the entrance to whatever lay behind it, all thoughts of finding a new hiding place forgotten.

 

Torvald was right, they couldn’t just leave her. Even when it came to surviving in here, recolours like them probably still only had each other to depend on.

 

 

“It’s wonderful to see you, a real treat. You’re our first visitor here, and what pleasure to have it be a glowing gal like you.”

 

The racer looked at her book again, then at the creature and back again. Yep, definitely the same person, even with his cute little brown press hat upon his head that wasn’t in the picture.

 

“How nice of you, Mister Fly.” The name in the programme surely said ‘Fly’, but he only had four legs instead of six like The Butterfly had. Still, she didn’t want to offend him by asking about it. He was so much bigger than The Butterfly, anyway. It was a little hard to hear herself speaking, there was a lot of noise coming from inside the Museum, but she didn’t let it distract her, that would be ignorant while she was talking to someone.

 

“Please, call me Flem. Well, while you’re here, stick around for a bit. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it here.” She looked off to the side, where that man with arms where his legs should be, and an extra head there as well was flip-flopping around, doing cartwheels and laughing to himself. It was little sad, what happened to the two of them, they way she had read they got tricked, even if she didn’t understand all the words in the book. She hoped they were happy the way they were now, at least, and thought about talking to him—them in a little while.

 

This place she’d found was so cool, even after all that stuff in the Museum before, why had no one else come here? Some people who worked here seemed to be missing anyway, there were a few banners she’d seen on the way here, but no sign of the people contained in them. How odd, at least one of them was in the programme.

 

With nowhere else to go, she decided to stay here with them a little while longer.

 

* * *

 

 

“Right this way, to the Freak Show!” a very odd, most definitely pre-recorded voice spoke quietly as they passed through the entrance. This entrance that looked just like a man’s face, and his cardboard mouth moved up and down, making getting inside a little tricky, especially when it opened into a spinning wheel, and they toppled over straight away. Eventually they managed to roll out, onto something wet and slimy before finally making it onto solid ground again. One the other side of the cardboard was a painting of that floating guy, she’d forgotten all about him with everything that’d happened. That explained the tongue then, she supposed

 

The irony of where they’d ended up was not lost on them, not at all. Freaks, heh, things that were just so weird and didn’t fit in anywhere else. Maybe that’s what the others thought they were back home, just being the other racers in a different colour. That’s all they saw of them, anyway. However different they were personality wise, that just got ignored. They had the sense to keep themselves apart from the others.

 

At least there was always Vanellope to pawn off as being the truly odd one out, but she was just a glitch, they were real racers that were made this way on purpose. Even Vanel— _the Glitch_ wasn’t just someone else in new paint.

 

It seemed rather deserted, for a ‘show’. There wasn’t much of anything or anyone around, which was probably for the best. But then where was Citrusella? They’d need to keep looking then; she had to be around here somewhere.

 

As they stepped up onto a part of the boardwalk, they found a trap door. “Huh, maybe she’s in here.” Torvald tapped at it with her foot, and from it out burst a brown thing wearing a strange red hat between its ears.

 

“What _is_ it?” On the way in they may have caught sight of a poster talking about a ‘spider-monkey’, maybe it was something like that?

 

“Eek, eek!” It hissed at them, before scampering away on its six furry legs, hanging onto whatever it could with its tail as well.

 

“Well, she’s not in there, definitely not.” Torvald pushed the door down and moved on.

 

They carried on making their way through the Freak Show, passing though a giant plant’s mouth into something called The Fly Trap, and trying to make their way along a very thin path, which below was filled to bursting with things like gummy worms, except a lot less gummy and a lot more fat and wrinkly and gross!

 

The worms hopped up and planted dry kisses on them, to which the only correct response was several slaps and ‘ewws’ all the way across.

 

Before they even noticed they had stumbled into the ‘Museum of the Slightly Curious’, filled with bones and shining gemstones on shelves and all sorts of other things. Like an eye in a jar, a man with only one eye (one no gap for a second either, just _one_ eye) frozen in ice, or a giant shoe, dubbed ‘The World’s Biggest Shoe’.

 

“Maybe we should hide in this shoe? No one’ll find us in here. I’m sure we’ll f—ah!” Something popped up from inside, something dark blue, it was---

 

“Citrusella, what’re you doing in there?!”

 

“I was hiding, obviously! Oh, it was horrible, Torvald! There was—this, this man, but he didn’t have any legs, there was just another man there, and he walked on his hands, his- his _other_ hands! I called for help using this and when no one came so I ran in here and hid in this shoe.”

 

“Where were you before that? We wanted to bring you along to the Shooting Gallery, that’s where we were hiding, but we couldn’t find you in time. We were worried.”

 

“Oh, um. When everything started, y’know, I lots of leaves blew out and covered me, and then something really bright happened and the gate changed! So I was stuck outside, and I was too scared to leave in case they had someone guarding the exit. Then, a little while ago, this really scary lady came to the gate and asked to be let in, then this tiny man in a dress let her come in, so I sneaked in then while the gates were open. The woman didn’t see me; I made sure to be sneaky. Oh, I saw someone walking this way, that’s why I came here; I was following her to see if we could work together, or something.”

 

“Her? You sure it wasn’t Gloyd or Rancis?”

 

“No, but I couldn’t tell who it was exactly, sorry.”

 

“It’s ok; at least we know someone else made it. We should go looking for them next.”

 

It wasn’t a moment after they had left the Museum (Citrusella started babbling something when she saw a decoration of an animal with two pairs of legs either end), that they walked out into the open, where there was a red and white spinning wheel and some seats.

 

And there was Candlehead, and she was getting attacked by a giant flying insect with sharp black claws!

 

Torvald didn’t move. Candlehead? _Candlehead?_ Candlehead hadn’t survived! If there was anything Torvald had been sure of since this whole thing started, it was that, just sitting there as she had. Still, more pressing matters and all. Citrusella blew on her vuvuzela at it, scaring the thing off long enough for them to reach her, and it flew away.

 

“Huh, hey, Mister Flem, where are you going? Hm?”

 

“Candlehead! It’s you!”

 

“Hm, oh! Hi Torvald. And Nougetsia, and Citrusella.” It took her far too long to notice their expressions. “What’s wrong?”

 

“Did you not just see that giant. . . _thing_ right next to you?”

 

“What thing?” Looking very confused indeed Candlehead took a nervous bite out of her cotton candy.

 

“and where did you get that cotton candy from?”

 

“From Betty.”

 

“Who’s Betty?” Nougetsia chimed in.

 

“Betty with the ‘X’, who has the cotton candy cart.”

 

“What? Who—never mind, it’s not that important.” Not having the time to waste on trying to get through to her, Torvald just settled on grabbing Candlehead’s hand and leading her away. “We need to get outta here. C’mon.”

 

“Ok. . . I don’t see what everyone’s so mad about though.” Candlehead didn’t belong in their group, she wasn’t a like them. But there was _something,_ about Candlehead. Sharing her name with Minty Zaki and being forced to take on a nickname for the others to notice her. It didn’t seem to bother her though, and in a situation like this they couldn’t let her leave and have to face whatever came next by herself.

* * *

 

“I’m sorry for not noticing you, Citrusella. I was following The Butterfly.”

 

“It’s alright, Candlehead. Now, just keep hold of my hand and we can stay safe. Let’s just be happy those Spider-monkeys are safe behind in that cage.” she remembered spider monkeys. . . she thought there was only one though. . .

 

“Huh, you mean Nik-Nak?” No one answered her.

 

They just kept on running, all in a line, one in front of the other, Torvald, Citrusella, her, Nougetsia. Running all in a line had started becoming a thing for them. They always rushed so much; she hadn’t time to notice anything at all!

 

All she’d caught so far was scraps of grey bricks, and a lowering draw bridge now. There might have been someone inside it, she wasn’t sure.

 

“Oiy am Oiyclopz!” Eyeclops? Did that sound familiar somehow, too?

 

“We don’t have time for this!” Torvald shouted, all she heard after that was something of a smash, and then she was getting dragged along again. The drawbridge seemed to close behind them with a thud, and thankfully they’d stopped for a little while.

 

“I say we go straight ahead, these doors might not lead to anywhere, and we’ll just get lost!” Candlehead let them talk amongst themselves. She still had half her cotton candy left (Betty was so generous!) to finish, and whatever funny little game they were playing of mazes and things, she didn’t want to interrupt it. She thought very well of the recolours, they were just like everyone else (and Torvald wasn’t mean like Minty sometimes was, not like her at all), but that wasn’t to say she could just join their fun so easily.

 

Running resumed as quick as it had ended, and they entered into another room. She saw a tall box shaped like a person, with sharp points on the inside, and two men that were walking stiffly about. They looked rather similar, though one wearing half a squishy looking red apron across his stomach, and a big spiky necklace and he wouldn’t stop smiling (not a very friendly looking smile either), and the other had a sort of silver-grey box on his head.

 

The others were screaming, and only started running even faster, wherever to she couldn’t be sure. But still. . .those two. . . Tort and Rodz ,were they?

 

“I know those people, they’re in my book!”

 

“What?”

 

“The one we got given before.”

 

“Not the best time, Candlehead!”

 

And they carried on going, though more rooms, down stairs, and down something of a really wide slide, before they came to a series of strange thin strips that moved, like taffy but dull and whirring and not very sweet seeming.

 

Right at the bottom there was lots of bright blue and yellow bowls on the strips, much bigger than any bowl she’d ever seen, getting filled up with strawberry jelly and getting carried away.

 

Seeing nowhere else to go Torvald climbed _into_ an already filled bowl.

 

“Quick, jump in!” and the others followed suit.

 

“But—but my candle!”

 

“C’mon! We need to stick together!” Even as they moved jerkily along on the line they were holding out their hands for her to grab on.

 

Oh, they. . . actually wanted her to join them? Did they really care that much? Well, if they were letting her join them in their game, then it was all in good fun, right?

 

Delighted in having made the recolours her proper friends, Candlehead let them help her into the bowl, and she took extra, extra care so that her candle didn’t get submerged even a little bit.

* * *

 

The next thing the group knew they were being moved somewhere, into what looked like a giant ring surrounded with walls, and a gorge-like drop all around it, save for a single weak looking bridge. Whatever was pushing them either didn’t notice them or just didn’t care, and that was for the best.

 

Once they felt they were safe, Torvald hopped out of the bowl, the others following suit soon after.

 

“Ewww. . .” Nougetsia batted the jelly from her skirt and her hat, while Candlehead checked to see if her candle was still lit.

 

“Where are we?” Citrusella mumbled in between trying to clean her vuvuzela, blowing any excess jelly out.

 

An oversized toy train rattled along on its track, its front bearing the ever so familiar face of that Jester.

 

“DON’T WAKE THE BABY~”

 

“SHHH, train!. . .please.” What they had thought only a statue shouted. It looked like a giant Graham Bear, but not as flat and a lot softer looking. It had two pointy front teeth, and a grey plate over a quarter of its face, leaving it with only one eye, but it was leaning over an equally giant cradle, whispering rather loudly at whatever was inside.

 

“Shh, sleep. Not time.”

 

Stepping away from the cradle it narrowed its eye at them. Even though it was just a bear it was hard not to cower considering its size.

 

“Hello, Dolls. Junior sleeping, dolls. Go back. . . to house.” The bear pointed off to the side with its skull rattle, a pale blue ribbon wrapped around it. Again the others started dragging her, into the dollhouse without even trying to argue with the bear.

 

All the jelly had slipped off their clothes without too much trouble, and with nothing for the time being a very present danger to them, the four of them had settled into the dollhouse, pushing all the tall wooden dolls that were already there into one corner.

 

“That’s a weird Graham bear.” Torvald said from her place lounging on the couch. “But he’s a Bad Guy, so why isn’t he attacking us?”

 

Candlehead leafed through her programme, folded up and kept dry beneath her hat. “I guess it’s his job to take care of Junior, since everyone else must be busy doing their jobs in other places.” She tapped at the page. “His name’s Deaddy, the bear, I mean.”

 

“Ok then, so if _Deaddy_ is gonna not attack us for now, maybe we should try and bring others here so they’ll be safe?”

 

“That’s a good idea! I’ll go. I have this book, so I’ll know everyone!”

 

“Ok, Candlehead. So, we’ll need to get you out of here. I say we distract the bear enough for you to sneak out.”

 

“I know what I can do!” Citrusella blew the loudest note she could, he cheeks flaring red. Candlehead wondered why she had decided to take a vuvuzela from one of Taffyta’s fans in the first place, or maybe she had just converted them and borrowed it? How sweet.

 

“Quiet, dolls!” At the noise Junior sat up, tilting his head at them. Candlehead inched her way out. She hadn’t enough of an opinion about babies to form one about him, his eyes could have been a little straighter, she supposed, but she was too nice to judge something like that.

 

“I’m sorry, Junior! T-That was just my friend, Citrusella Flugpucker.”

 

“Fl-Fl. . . ?.Plu. . . hmph” Junior just whined and rolled over, flopping back into the crib. Candlehead wondered how just long he’d been here, and yet still couldn’t talk that well.

 

“Junior needs sleep now, little doll. Go home and live in dollhouse. Go there or leave.”

 

“You’re. . . you’re kicking me out, Mister Deaddy?” She tried to look as hurt as she could be, when this was exactly what she wanted.

 

“Yes, little Lamp Doll,” Even with one eye Candlehead could tell the bear was staring at her candle, burning bright as ever. “are dangerous, go away.”

 

“Oh. . . ok. Please be nice to my friends then.” She flashed a nervous smile.

 

“Won’t hurt. . . nice dolls.”

 

“Thank you.” The others mimed ‘good luck’s and ‘stay safe’s through the house’s windows, but she didn’t really know what they were worrying about.

 

Now, to do as she was told and leave. Candlehead gave the toy train a little glance on her way out, catching sight of the speck of orange on the yellow half of his ‘hat’ (it felt like the yellow was on the wrong side, and the red half was just wrong all together).

 

“Bye-bye, Mister Maybe-Umlaut Train.” She gave it a little wave.

 

“Watch your step, girlie! Or maybe not, haha!” The train grinned its toothy grin, dislodging the speck- it was The Butterfly.

 

It fluttered by, out the wooden gates, and she followed it cautiously. She watched it from the edge of the rope bridge, and it started flying off over the valley around the compound. It could fly, but even so she worried for it.

“Ah! Monarch Butterfly, be careful! There’s nothing t--!” In between trying to wave her hands to it to make it come back, and trying to lean forward and catch it she overbalanced, and yet she didn’t feel herself falling for anything longer than a second, hitting the floor. The ground flickered a little, the image of the valley switching to solid flooring and back again. Candlehead pushed herself up. “Ouch. . .Huh, it’s fake?” She felt further along the floor, where she it probably looked like she was floating, only finding more smooth ground instead of air.

 

The Butterfly hovered, circled around her once, then carried on, and she hurried after it.

 

Even if it wasn’t a good or bad guy, it would take her back to where everyone else could be, definitely. She just knew it would. It had led her to her friends the first time, what else could it be doing now?

 

Candlehead still didn’t know but about what was going on, but with all this searching for things and meeting new people, this was turning out to be a pretty fun party after all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh look, no one died. . .
> 
> Aw, Betty doesn’t seem to know what’s going on, but at least she’s doing something nice-ish. Since in the game when you shoot her a red X appears over her, I decided she carries an X on her back as a prop for when she’s working, so if she gets shot she can move it around to her front. By the way, I chose her surname to be Quinn, named after Kevin Quinn, the game’s composer. Betty’s song/rhyme thing comes from a faux poster that shows up on the front panel of the small cabinets between the speakers (what a weird place to put speakers), and the side of the large cabinets in that place where the guns are away from the cabinet (if you get that). I don’t know what purpose it serves (since the game instructions are above it on the bezel on the small cabinets), but it’s a cool little thing to have as a cabinet decoration.
> 
> I rushed though some of the more action-y bits on purpose. We’ll be looking over them again later, in more detail. Also Candlehead isn’t that observant, so she wouldn’t really notice a lot anyway while everyone’s running for their lives and she’s just being dragged along.
> 
> Now, Tort and Rodz HORRIFY ME (mostly Tort), seriously I just cringe even thinking about them. They were the thing that scared me most of all when I used to see the game as a child (that walk cycle and them eyes). Brrrr, I never want to write about them again, but I just said that I will! x___x
> 
> I do feel sorry for FlapJack (the enemy that’s two torsos and one side walks on its hands), they used to be acrobat twins at a small circus, but they got tricked into joining this carnival and they got lobotomised and made the way they are. Though they sound like Goofy so it’s kinda awkward too.
> 
> By the way, the butterfly I mentioned is something that appears in the cinematic at the end of the game. It’s just a cute little reference because I find the fact that a butterfly would just pop up so random. From what I could see in-game I’m pretty sure it’s a monarch butterfly, especially since it’s a pretty common butterfly in America, I hear.
> 
> Just an FYI, Deaddy was a replacement boss for Junior in case people got really offended about the whole giant undead baby boss thing, but I thought they could co-exist in this fic, rather than one just not spawning unless the dip-switches are changed. 
> 
> I wasn’t sure what to do about the Umlaut train, since though it looks like him, the colours aren’t the same it probably isn’t really him (his ‘hat’ front of the train is dirty red on the left and yellow on the right, whereas Umlauts is yellow on the left and purple on the right), but it has his voice, so I don’t know. I mean he is kinda magical so he probably could control the train and be himself, but I dunno. What do you guys think?


	7. Up in the Air

It was going _awesomely_ , as it should have been. Well, not as awesome as it _could_ have been going, but hey this was her first go at this, she might as well savour it.

An hour into her Time Trial (with far less focus on the actual time, the idea of it was far more important) Vanellope wasn’t sure just how much of the track she’d covered, and it didn’t really matter.

Starting to push her kart up the hill towards the end of Gumball Gorge she was glad the gaps in the racetrack were thankfully covered up with taffy strips during Time Trials to stop karts slowing down, because there was no way she’d be able to cross them with her push-kart otherwise. The lack of gumballs was for the best too, those things were fast when they wanted to be! No matter how long it took, she was gonna finish this time trial and have as much fun as possible on the way, all before everyone came back, too!

She would get this done and no one’d suspect a thing, all bundled up in their houses for the night even though the sun never set here. None of the NPC supporters cared after the roster race was over, just amusing themselves, and sometimes venturing outside probably. But since tomorrow was everyone’s day off they were probably off having fun somewhere, just like everyone else was probably doing outside, where she never could. Right, yep, she deserved this, she deserved to have things go her way for once.

With her unending enthusiasm, Vanellope carried on.

* * *

“So, Jacob was all: “Let’s go on this Ghost Tour, it’ll be amazing”, in the rain mind you, dragged me and Betty along because there has to be someone looking out for him— He’s always doing weird stuff like this—and then _this_ goes and happens!”

“What went and happened?” Sticky said, and Swizzle could tell she didn’t understand any of it, neither did he for that matter. Their game seemed so different to theirs in every way possible, even after the games he’d explored before.

“CarnEvil came back, and now we’re stuck there!” Lisa seemed to realise that she wasn’t very trapped at all, since they were right here in BurgerTime, and pulled a face and gestured to try and make them understand they were trapped as far as work was concerned. “Honestly, he can’t help himself, always tempting fate.”

“I’m right here, y’know. And hey, don’t blame me for being curious.”

“There’s being curious, and there’s doing exactly what you aren’t supposed to!”

“Yep, but don’t say you won’t enjoy it. And it’ll make the Gamers enjoy it too. Oh, first Quarter Alert, you can’t come soon enough!” 

“I’m sure they will! I can’t wait either, actually. Heh.” Lisa laughed, glancing away as if embarrassed by the fact that she complained so much about Jacob’s impulsiveness, but was excited to start work anyway.

“I hope we don’t hafta to re-film the intro,” Jacob muttered in between taking spoonfuls of his newly acquired ice-cream. He’s taken a particular interest in the Charlie person as well, inviting him to come and visit later on. It seemed they loved the attention of being new. “I couldn’t find Spooky Sam anywhere, and we need him to drive.”

“I don’t think he’s in the game, Jacob. I think you’re playing every guy on the tour in the intro, or you _played_ every guy. . .? I feel like we’ve already recorded it, but I don’t remember doing it. We’ll hafta check when we get home.”

“What’s an intro?”

 “Do you guys not have an intro like that? That’s a shame, it was a lot of fun. . . at least, I think it was. It’s basically just a thing to attract Gamers, show them some characters and things, what the game’s about. We have a few different ones.”

Swizzle couldn’t remember there ever being something of an intro like that in _Sugar Rush_ , and he thought he would have remembered something that important, but if even these guys were unable to remember if it was finished or not. . .

“If you ever come visiting, we’ll show it to you if you like, when we find it. I’m sure the Boss’ll love to have you over sometime, especially since your friends would have already been.”

“Hm, your Boss? What’s he like?” From the scarce information King Candy had provided, Swizzle really had no idea what their game could be like, and who ran a place like that was equally as impossible to determine, and Swizzle couldn’t even begin to imagine it. It was hard to imagine even the idea of a Bad Guy, since back home there was only each other as competition, it was fascinating, and what better place to hear it from than these ever so excited Good Guys: Jacob Haeger and Lisa Nicastro?

“Well, he aint _our_ boss, obviously, since he’s a Bad Guy. But we had a little chat earlier to plan the party out. Hm, I guess he’s like. . .”

* * *

The wind was howling, as he had come to expect from this place, but from up here it was so much colder than before.

He could catch sight of the red and white tent below, as they drifted closer to it. Pondering on that time long ago he knew it was the best mix of colours for a tent, or for anything for that matter. He kept silent, so high above the ground demanding to be let go started sounding like a bad idea, and he had the sense to be quiet.

She didn’t say anything either, as if she needed to focus really hard to know where she was going, the moon glinted in her teeth and on her skin. The pure glow of it made the gash on her neck look even worse, and it was pretty much the only thing he could see from this angle.

While she held onto his collar with one hand and her axe in the other, King Candy was clutching Sour Bill close to his chest, and Sour Bill holding tight onto his kart-horn stick. His leg was bent at the knee, pulled up as if frozen with how much he was tensing, while the other hung limp because moving his foot was the worst possible thing to do in every way right now. As if things could get any worse. 

All his spare time while she floated along made King Candy realise that he’d seen this woman before. Yes, talking to Umlaut outside her game in Game Central Station. Wrong-Way had taken her somewhere, why had she come back? Oh, his plan to go to Tapper’s tonight, before he’d even been invited here, that felt like an eternity ago, thousands of hours and yet it was only three!

Even though it seemed as though they’d been drifting along forever, after only a few minutes she landed on the wooden deck of that gaudy airship with the dark red wings, her feet and the edge of her dress brushing it lightly. There were lots of skeletons, bare skeletons without anything of note at all, wandering about, bowing when they saw the woman and letting her pass along unhindered, into a cage.

“Wh-Where are we going?” 

“Silence, petit roi.” She shook him up and down irritably, as the cage slowly lowered into a gap in the floor.

 _“Hm, has anyone reached ze Freak Show?”_ a voice spoke, lined with a German accent.

 _“. . .And so Rick was chosen to be King of all the_ Skeleteens _, forever -that’s our name now guys, none of that ‘Guilloteen’ rubbish!- and he had the crown to prove it!”_ This voice sounded a lot grainier and distorted, as if not from the room below but from somewhere else. _“Huh, what’s. . .?”_

 _“Someone must’ve, there’s only been -- Game Overs so far, and there’s fifteen of them running around.”_ And that was Umlaut, there was no mistaking his screeching.

 _“Smeek has not yet returned. . .”_ The first voice spoke again.

_“I’m sure he’ll be back soon, Boss! Maybe he found the missing bags and is giving them back first.”_

The cage jerked to a stop in front of a small room covered in wood panels, decorated with numerous screens on the walls, and buttons and levels all along the back on a curved desk built into it. 

In the centre of the room sat a chair, and beside it hovered Umlaut, trailing bright glitter as always. He spotted him immediately, whispering something to whoever was sat in it. 

The woman tossed them out into the room properly, and King Candy dropped Sour Bill in mid air to pull his leg up against him so that it didn’t hit the floor. 

“I’m thorry, Thour Bill. I. . .” A shadow covered them, and he swallowed whatever shudder before it came.

He was tall, ever so tall, even from the floor he could tell. Starting from his brown leather boots and his faded yellow trousers tucked into them, a royal blue tailcoat with red tipped sleeves, bright pink on the underside, while streaks of yellow served as lapels with skulls on the shoulders, his long pointed brown beard lined with grey and moustache the same length, eyes cold as ice and the exact same colour. His left eye was covered by a gold circle, and from what King Candy could recall from earlier, surely it was a token with Umlaut embossed on it, serving as a monocle or eye patch or both.

He knew, oh he knew it straight away.

_‘The illustrious, magnificent ringmaster of our carnival, Baron von_ _Tökkentäkker_ _’_

That was him!

He who’d thought up everything, who ran this place, who was responsible for everything here!

“Ah, _Herr_ Candy, is it? Velcome aboard. I have been—Oomfph.” 

“Oh, Ludwig, _mon ch_ _é_ _rie_ , it is so good to see you!” She had dropped her axe and rushed forward, actually touching the floor, and she pushed herself onto her tiptoes to plant a very forceful kiss on him. “It has been far too long, I have missed you.” Her soft, coy giggle sounded more like an awful cackle.

Even from the floor King Candy could see Umlaut rolling his eyes, but there was something more sincere twitching in his constant smile as well.

“It is to see you as vell, Marie.” He managed once she’d let go of him. “Zank you for bringing our guest here.” 

She only nodded with that tooth filled grin of hers, before picking up her axe, and leaving without another word on the matter. Even with her. . .affections, it seemed she still prioritised her job, as was most important in a Quarter Alert.

“Nice of you to join us, two levels, you did pretty well, hah! But now it’s Game Over for you two, so you can stay here for a while. Don’t just sit on the floor, have a seat, _your Highness._ ” Offering him his seat, he stepped out of the way, and King Candy dragging himself along he managed to pull himself up onto the chair, Sour Bill helping a little and then sitting himself on the arm rest. It was very plush and soft, like velvet, even on the arms.

“Vould you like some wine vhile you are here?”

Not giving him a glance King Candy just shook his head, ‘no’, and the bottle of 1870 Rheingau went unopened.

“Oh, King Candy, you sneaky thing, you didn’t even try to run away back at the Haunted House. I can see why you wanted to get caught by Marie!” They had seen him back there? But. . . 

“How did you--?”

“She’s been with us since the start; we picked her up in France, back in 1882.” Umlaut ignored him completely. “Her name was. . .”

“Marion Toussaint.” King Candy almost questioned why her name was different, but then he just as quickly realised she was clearly meant to be parodying someone as part of her level, so it was just her performance name, he supposed.

“Yeah, she and her cousins were working for a little circus, and we bought her, and them too.” 

“It vas betveen her and anover girl, Violet. Violet especially vanted to join us, but ve could not afford to employ everyone at that time. The circus did not vant us taking avay zeir star contortionist eizer. She had talent.”

“Talented or not, Boss, Violet was crazy, she would have tried to stab someone, and not the people we’d want stabbed.” King Candy caught Umlaut’s very aside glance shot over his head. “Besides, she was, um, prior engaged, and would have brought us nothing but trouble.” While he was distracted, he tried to push himself forward to rest his foot, wincing, and his shoe dropped on the floor from catching the cushion. “Huh, what’s up with your leg?”

“I broke my ankle at the Haunted House, after one of your _zombieth_ pushed the car off the roof!”

“The zombies aren’t employe—I mean, you sure?”

“Of courthe I’m thure!”

“Huh, if you say so.” Sour Bill fidgeted with the car horn stick from his place on the arm rest. “Oh hey, you even brought your own splint. Sour Bill, is it? Would you hold it in place for me? Since obviously I can’t.” The edges on his collar all flipped up at once to demonstrate his lack of hands. 

 

“. . .OK.” 

“Let’s have a look at it then!” He floated down low enough to inspect it properly, and was his foot not broken, or he feared losing his foot completely to those teeth, he would have gladly given him a kick right in his smug little skull face, for tricking him, for being the whole reason his foot was broken, but he didn’t dare. 

Umlaut gave the stick a little tap with one of the bells on his hat, it jingling once with a very dull ring, a few sparkles pouring out, and some straps grew out around the stick, keeping it tightly in place. “That’ll do for now. We can get a Doctor later on, alright?”

 

What? What was that for? It wasn’t like he could escape even if he tried to, so what did they have to gain by helping him? 

 

“W-Why are you. . .?”

 

“Now that you’re all patched up, let’s see what everyone’s up to at the Freak Show!” The screen in front went to static, before focusing into a shot of some area of the carnival he’d never been. “Hm, no one there. Next.” It jumped to somewhere else, as if switching cameras.

“Ah, here they are!” The camera picked up slightly blurred black and white footage of Candlehead, Jubileena, Adorabeezle and Minty Zaki (now that did sound off, Minty Zaki and Candlehead, working together?) running around in what was apparently the Freak Show. Since Kind Candy had never reached there he couldn’t say, but seeing four of them working together was far too unusual for him to think about that, even more unusual than the fact that Candlehead hadn’t wound up dead already like he’d suspected from the start.

 _“I’m sorry for not noticing you, Citrusella.”_ Oh, it was Citrusella, not Jubileena, of course, the vuvuzela. That was even worse, what was one of the recolours doing mixed in with them? _“I was following The Butterfly.”_

 

They watched them for a little while longer, running anywhere and everywhere without any sense of direction. Even though he had no idea where they should go, part of him wished he could shout to them wherever they were, and at least try and help them get less lost. 

“Chamber of Horrors. . . Eyeclops. . .”He heard Ludwig murmuring to himself, muffled beneath his hand that was occasionally coming to stroke at his beard, and he almost asked him what he was talking about, but thought better of it.

 

As it turned out he didn’t need to wait for long before everything made sense.

_“Oiy am Oiyklopss!”_ Came a distinct Cockney voice over the speakers.

_“Eek, what’s that?!”_ He didn’t blameCitrusella, nothing in _Sugar Rush_ had prepared them for everything they must’ve been running into all the time, especially not. . .that. Not for all those eyes, one on each of his two heads, and speckled all over his chest. His legs were covered in heavy looking armour, but King Candy didn’t doubt for a second that there’d be eyes there as well. The giant sword didn’t bode well either.

“What _ith_ that?”

 

“It’s Eyeclops, didn’t you hear him? He used to be our sword swallower, groundskeeper and stuff, back when we actually could travel around. Nice guy, if a little two-faced sometimes, ha!” The way Umlaut described him made King Candy wonder if this ‘Eyeclops’ used to be a human before everyone became undead, or indeed, if everyone here did. “Ian Cr. . . I don’t remember his name from before. We just let him guard the Chamber of Horrors now. He seems happy enough.”

 

_“We don’t have time for this!”_

_“Torvald what are you doing?! Be careful!”_ Through the screen they saw what was decidedly Torvald (it wasn’t his fault if it was in black and white) snatching Citrusella’s vuvuzela off her and smashing it into Eyeclops, who proceeded to over balance and stumbled off the draw bridge that led into the Chamber of Horrors.

_“Bluddy ‘ell!”_

 

The four of them, Candlehead especially, didn’t notice and ran into the Chamber of Horrors without missing a beat. King Candy doubted Candlehead had even noticed Eyeclops in the least. 

 

“Huh, they all made it, good for them. That Torvald sure has an arm on her! Still don’t know why she’s so stuffy though, hating my rhymes like before.” He didn’t answer. “Hey, aren’t you happy, your subjects got past Eyeclops. Aint that something?”

 

“Yes, yes I’m s _tho_ happy that my racerth were attacked by a two headed eye monthter and nearly fell into a bottomleths pit!”

 

“Do I detect a hint of. . . sar _chasm_ there?”

 

“Ah, puns, hoo hoo, I preferred your rhyming.”

 

The drawbridge sealed up behind the four of them, Candlehead still way too focused on eating her cotton candy than actually staying alive, and yet she still managed to do both well enough. They carried on, King Candy assuming that since it Torvald and Citrusella together, that the other wasn’t Adorabeezle at all, but Nougetsia. Well, at least that was probably the worst thing—

 

And then _it_ popped up.

 

“Oh. . . thweet admin’th ghotht. WHAT ISTH THAT?!” King Candy slammed back in his chair as far as he could go, grabbing lumps in the cushion beneath him. Even mostly apathetic Sour Bill shuffled backwards at the shock.

 

At first glance he was fine, pale and bald as he had come to expect all the zombies here to be. What he wasn’t expecting was the _wide open vivisection_ on his stomach, and the skin on his hands clipped back to the elbow, while strips of black tugged his mouth into a smile. He had the worst walk cycle too, jerky and stiff like one of those robots, but far too quick at the same time, while the white of his kneecaps jutted out way too far.

 

“Ugh, I told Tort to take that apron off! And those gloves, and those kneepads, and that thing on his face! Why doesn’t he listen?”

 

“It is very intriguing zough, zat he vould pretend to look like zat, even vhen he hasn’t been torturing himself today.”

 

“I should hope not, we were far too busy getting everything ready for that. I guess he just wanted to see how everyone took his ‘look’. Judging by what we have right here,” A single collar flick in his general direction. “it’ll scare everyone fine.”

 

He managed to calm down to a level of ‘utterly terrified’ at the fact that it was just part of his costume for today, but idea that he _wanted_ to look like that was bad enough, never mind that sometimes it might have actually been real, and then he’d _done it to himself_.

 

“Hooo,” It came out as more of a sigh, a very exasperated one at that. “you employ people like that, and you wonder why the people of thith town wanted to burn you down?”

 

“Still no excuse for them being so rude about it! That’s enough of that for now. Let’s see what everyone else is up to.” Without any hope of finding out what would become of the girls, the screen turned off, and instead they just started filtering in sound from elsewhere.

_"Ah, mademoiselle, nous allons vous faire belle! Eh bien, le premier ..."_

_"Leave Crumbelina alone! Hey! What’re you doing?! Stop!"_ That sounded like Rancis. Oh, goodness, Rancis was on Monday’s Roster too, what was he doing, trying to protect Crumbelina? He should have been keeping himself safe, not making Marie angry. Had he somehow not noticed her fangs or her axe?

_"Chut, garcon. Je dois travailler. . ."_ _Marie seemed unperturbed, almost as if she was ignoring him, or just luring him into a false sense of security. Maybe it was for the best that he couldn’t see what was going on wherever she was now._

"Marie must've made it back home already. I’m sure she’s fine now; let’s see what’s happening in Rickety Town, then--" The sound channel skipped again, but instead of the noise bleeding though it blared instead, and a picture appeared in the small screen higher up.

_“HELP US!”_

_“Oh God, she’s here!”_

_“Look at what you’ve done now!”_

_“Hey-! We know you’re listening!”_

“Jeez, loud much. What’s the matter?”

_“I-it’s the Tinsel, She’s gone crazy! It’s Taf--!”_

 

“Get back to work!” Umlaut drifted closer to the microphone. “I know you’re angry that we took the Taffy Puller, but I’m telling you, it wasn’t a taffy puller, it was the credit reel machine and the audit recorder, and lots of other things, and you broke its music player!”

 

“No, no, it’s not that!” The grey skinned Guilloteen got even closer to the camera, while other sounds of screaming and glimpses of the other Guilloteens running past occasionally got through. “Umlaut, Boss, please, just liste--!” Umlaut pressed a button with one of his bells, turning the smaller screen off, scoffing.

 

“Seriously, we name a level after him and give him a job, he takes out the ‘bat’ and still he keeps whining.”

 

“Young _Herr_ Beatty is razer disobedient, but it is to be expected. He has not been vorking for zat long, Umlaut.” ‘Beatty?’ Of all the Guilloteens King Candy had met, albeit not all of them, in his trip to Rickety Town, there had been none with a name like that, especially since it wasn’t food related.

 

“Who wath that?”

 

“It’s just Rick, ignore him. He’s always complaining.” It was Rick! “Come to think of it, was he wearing your crown?” Umlaut looked at the Guilloteen hat upon his head as if he was _only just_ noticing it.

 

“Yesth, Rick thtole my crown!”

 

“Well, I’m sure we can get it back off him. All in good time, of course. Until then I suggest you make the most of the time you’re spending here, your Highness.”

 

It was obvious he wasn’t going to leave here any time soon, in this tiny study in this airship however many feet in the air. He’d be stuck here with nothing to do but watch things go on without being able to change a thing. 

 

“I think. . . I’ll take that wine, now.”

 

Might as well ‘make the most of it’, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don’t kill me for the whole Rick’s name thing, at first it was completely unintentional.
> 
> I don’t know why I made a reference to Violet from Thrill Kill. For some reason I think that something like Thrill Kill would take place in the same universe as this. Violet probably didn’t live in the 1880s, but whatever, references are references and I put them everywhere.
> 
> Um, yeah. I’d ship Marie and Tökkentäkker all day and all night. I have no idea why, don’t judge meeee. Totally not because I just assumed they were together the first time I watched a play through of this game. . . also they’re the only bosses in the game to get super special ‘repeat scene from 3 different angles’ when they die.
> 
> Brr, something about the noise Umlaut’s Bells make unnerves me. I really like that they sometimes had Umlaut’s bells make noise, but its such a lifeless noise it makes when it does, which I guess is on purpose. Seriously it’s like someone just punched a jingle bell once, and made sure it didn’t move when they hit it. In most play-throughs you can’t hear it because everyone is just shooting everything all the time, but once you hear it you know (I think it only happens when he flips over, but I’m not sure).


	8. Big Tops and Birthdays

She was sprinting, running, whatever, running and never looking back, hopping over whatever got in her way: red and white fences and see through hard candy blocks, maybe, she could barely see at all.

It didn't matter where she ended up, anything to keep them, and _it_ away, get her away from that icing sugar place. After _that_ , no she couldn't stay there. Part of her hoped that, maybe, _maybe_ , the others weren't… she couldn't think about that, no point, it was over now.

Whatever happened, she needed to keep herself safe first, everything else, and everyone else, came later.

* * *

She was scurrying about, cautious. Where she was off to she couldn't be sure, but it was for the best, better for them no matter where she ended up.

Once she'd been wading along the tiny stream, looking for where to go, the banging and crashing from the House had scared her out of her wits and sent her running for real. She supposed something must have fallen off the roof; hopefully the others were ok where she'd left them. She couldn't go back, they would get found if she'd stayed there.

All that mattered was keeping everyone else safe.

* * *

She was bouncing along, bobbing with the orange dot while it fluttered. She trusted it completely, it might have not really been helping her, but it was so helpful wherever it happened to go. Already she'd made it out of the chasm, fake as it was, without any trouble at all.

She hoped there'd be others where she ended up next; maybe they were having fun there. The others didn't seem to be having much fun before she'd gone. It didn't make sense.

Why weren't the others having any fun? Wasn't that the whole point of King Candy's party here?

* * *

It wasn't all that far, really, where she'd ended up, but it felt like it had taken forever for her to get there. It stood out enough, back in the Haunted House she'd seen it from the hill, so it wasn't that she thought it was boring and didn't want to go there. She very much wished to go, go where she wouldn't be noticed and maybe help whoever was trapped in there too.

For some reason though, whenever she got too close to, she would suddenly forget where she was going, and wound up going in circles. It was if there was something that didn't want her going there, at least, not yet, leaving her with nowhere to go and completely out in the open. It was a lot harder to stay positive when she was all alone, but she would, just like Gloyd told her to. Sometime she'd been tempted to go to some of the other attractions in front, but this place was red, she wouldn't stand out here as much, then she couldn't get anyone else into any trouble, and so she'd stayed patient, getting as close as it would let her and just waiting.

Now though, something felt different, and when she got close enough she had tripped over, but landing safely closer than she'd ever got before. Why made no sense, but she didn't really think about questioning it. This game was already nothing like home, that much was obvious (and part in reason Gloyd had looked so happy when he was making his traps, she supposed), so trying to guess at things was a bit silly.

Here, finally, she got a good look at where she was in the middle of working herself up to go to. It was a tent with red and white stripes, but far bigger than any tent she'd ever seen, it was maybe even as big as the Haunted House, and just as tall, and the House had been on top of a hill! Something like one of their advertisement blimps back home, but with wings, and so much bigger like she'd expected, floated over the top.

"Wow," It must've been easy to get lost in, but maybe easier to find people than the Haunted House, if it was just a normal-ish tent inside. Yup, she needed to focus on that kind of thing if she was ever gonna be able to go in there.

Just before Jubileena began preparing to dash headlong into the place, she heard something, a quiet voice coming from somewhere to her right.

" _S-U-G-A-R, jump into your racing car, say Sugar Rush. Sugar Rush!"_

Hm, what was it? It sounded like…someone was singing, and the song from their game too!

Jubileena squinted, trying both to make out what it was and be prepared to run off should it be another Bad Guy. A ways off there was something, a light bouncing around in the dark, flickering a little, like. . .like a candle!

"Candlehead, is that you?" the something stopped, and as if it was looking up from something it looked a little taller for a second, then it came running, candle jumping all over the place.

"Hi there, Jubileena! I thought The Butterfly wasn't gonna lead me anywhere!" What was definitely Candlehead slowed down next to her, catching her breath, what looked like a thin book tucked under her arm.

"The. . .what?"

"I followed it here after Deaddy the giant Graham Bear told me I should go, like Citrusella and Nougetsia and Torvald wanted." Though Jubileena thought she should have been questioning what a giant graham bear was doing in a place like this, the way Candlehead talked about the others made it sound like they were fine when she left, so that was something at least. Like Gloyd said, focus on those how made it. "You should come back to see him, he's kinda cranky, but he looks very soft and squishy too! Um, it's just… erm…" Candlehead glanced behind her, twirling around and the double checking. "I don't remember how I got here. Can I stay with you, Jubileena, please? The Butterfly might not come back."

"Of course you can stay with me, no one likes being all alone, especially not somewhere like here." Candlehead gave her a look like she didn't really understand; maybe she'd managed to avoid all the horrible things here so far. "Anyway, it's wonderful to see you." Jubileena would have asked her more about where she'd been, since it sounded like the safest place to wind up (though that could have just been Candlehead's obliviousness talking, but Jubileena didn't think anything less of her for it), but a trudging green blob stole her attention away before she could say any more.

Straight opposite from the tent's entrance, in front of that place with the wheel and all the brighter lights and music than the Haunted House, someone was staggering along towards them.

Huh, is that. . .?" With Sticky with Swizzle on their own, probably much safer party elsewhere, and Torvald back wherever Candlehead had come from, there was no mistaking the green blob that was Minty Zaki.

"Minty? Minty, what's wrong?"

"A-A-Adorabeezle. . .a-and. . .Sn-Snowanna. . .left them. . ." By now Minty had stopped, dropping flat on her face as if she'd been walking for hours. Jubileena helped her onto her knees. She just covered her face, as if to hide the fact she was crying.

"What about Adorabeezle and Snowanna? Have- have you seen them?"

"I ran away when I should have stayed with them. It's all my fault! And now they're. . ."

"Don't talk like that Minty. You were scared, everyone's scared right now, it wasn't your fault." She wasn't just saying that because Snowanna and Adorabeezle were her friends. Jubileena wasn't denying it to herself because of that reason, of course not. "When—when we find them I'm sure they'll understand, and won't blame you just for being afraid."

"You don't understand, I saw _it_. I was hiding next to the place; I went back because I thought I could go back in and save them. I jumped up this rocket thing next to it and waited. But _it,_ it came out with its beard and its claws as big as candy tree twigs, and it had a bag. . ."

"Maybe it was just some Tinsels playing." Candlehead mused in her usual absentminded way, flicking though her programme. "Tinsels can hide in his bag, I guess, since them and Krampus are friends, I read it in this book."

Minty Zaki looked up with a glare, like it was the first time she'd even noticed her.

"You did this! It's all _your_ fault, Candlehead, you put the token in when you weren't supposed to! We're in this mess because of you!"

At the outburst Candlehead shrunk back, hiding behind her a little. She always tried so hard to keep out of Minty's way. Jubileena stepped further forward, looking down.

"I know you're upset Minty, but don't shout at her like that, you know she never meant for this to happen. One of us would have ended up being tricked into doing it sooner or later, Candlehead was just unlucky. We can't fight here, we need to work together." The apple themed racer didn't react much, merely wiping her eyes and pushing herself up. She mumbled something about her being right, though not apologising to Candlehead, but coming from Minty it was probably the best she could hope for. Having two recolours had left her less than pleased with someone 'stealing' her name as well. Jubileena didn't mind having a recolour nearly as much, though they liked to keep to themselves and that was fine by her at the same time. They were only a year old; there was plenty of time for them to maybe make friends with them all in the future.

They might have carried on resolving things, and they not been distracted by the fact that the wheel from where Minty Zaki had come was _on fire._ They couldn't see much from over here, with the smoke blending in with the clouds, but the wheel seemed to break off its stand and fall over, pushing over a statue that went smashing into what Minty called the 'Slay Ride' and sending a dust cloud up into the air. Lots of very distorted, distant screams echoed from there.

"Oh, dear. I hope there's no one there! They could be hurt!"

"There isn't. When I left. . .I was the only one. I don't know what happened to Taffyta, she said she was going to meet us when we got separated, but never came back. I should have gone looking for her too. They're just Bad Guys, and they'll be fine. Come on, we need to go into this place before everyone comes to see what's going on over there."

* * *

Why would the Big Bunyan Ride set on fire? Nothing from her book said that it was supposed to do that, even if it was firmly in the 'new additions' section of the book. Still, at least Minty was sure that there was no one there anymore.

They'd sneaked into the Big Top rather well, past the ticket booth and off into the main entrance. Candlehead'd spotted that missing person from the Freak Show posters here, the tallish man with funny make-up and a purple outfit. She had called out to him with a cheery 'Mr Ozob, I remember you, can I have your autograph?', but the others just dragged her off to avoid them, much like Citrusella and Torvald an hour earlier did.

Now they were safely in the 'no performers beyond this point' area (that seemed a little _too_ sneaky in her opinion). At the food stand someone her book said was Smeek (or was it Smeak?), a cute little thing about their size wearing all white and a frill around his neck, was serving, but he gave one look at Minty and chose to ignore the lot of them. Candlehead wished she could have talked to him for a little while, he looked so sweet, and he even had four fingers just like them! She hoped she had time after the party.

Minty stopped around four mimes that were practicing. She was saying something about blending in since they weren't performers and they might get caught, standing on one leg and trying her hardest to copy them, but failing for the most part. They had awfully long necks for people, then again, they had pretty long legs and arms compared to what their game was used to, so maybe it was normal for them, or for mimes in general. Candlehead wandered up to them.

"Huh, you're The Mames, but which one of you is Marcel? Or Maurice, or Marquis, or Marshall? Can I have all your autographs, please?" Being mimes, they didn't say or do anything outside of their practicing, the only sign they even noticed her was the brief glance at them. How professional they were. Hm, all those 'M' names, and a surname like 'Tourtellotte' between the four of them, maybe they were related to the 'Marion Toussaint' she'd seen in the 'History' page?

"We can't stay here. We don't blend in at all with these people since they're all black and white, and that guy," Jubileena was far too polite to point, but Candlehead knew she was talking about Smeek. "knows we aren't supposed to be here."

After she'd barely had enough time to wave the Mames goodbye, they were off again, past a poster she couldn't read for some reason, and close to where the actual rings must have been, though she didn't know much about circuses until tonight.

" _Holachiquitas! Mi_ _nombreesMeurtito!_ _"_ Shrieked a furry thing with a person's body with big black wings on its back. It didn't seem to be speaking a language she could understand, and even if Candlehead could she didn't think she'd be able to keep up with how fast the little thing was talking. Hence, she couldn't talk to him either, though she didn't have time with them dragging her along either, probably not seeing the playfulness in how he was trying to poke at them with fork-like things. Though there was more than one of them, the others didn't talk, but she ignored it.

It seemed like a shame that the Big Top was so deserted. It made sense since the game was so new and they were its only visitors right now, but it was so strange, seeing so many seats set out yet no one there to watch. It was like if they didn't have any supporters when they raced back home, what a horrible idea. The whole getting burned down thing was such a shame too, but at least it was back now. Speaking of which since this was the first day of being plugged in she guessed it could be a birthday for the carnival, she would need to tell the owner a happy birthday when they met. What was his name again?

Pottering down the empty steps, with her somehow in front and Minty at the back (and Candlehead much preferred the Jubileena shaped gap between them), they reached the centre ring. It wasn't much like the other rings at all, filled with strange white tiles and lots of shiny equipment. There was something like Nik-Nak the Spider monkey strapped up, but much, much bigger, and black, and there's was something weird with its hands.

Behind that, near the edge of the ring, stood a man with orange hair stuck up on end and a long white coat with a turquoise shirt and pants underneath. He was in the book, but Candlehead hadn't read much about him, and didn't think it was the best time to go reading it.

Jubileena inched forward, only tiptoeing on the tiles, and trying not to make too much noise. He seemed to be drawing something on a blackboard using candy chalk, but he heard her anyway.

He bent at the knee to even just be able to look down on them, even taller than Mister Ozob.

" _Oh_ , _dearie_ , we need your brain, for the simply _darling_ Ape over there~♥ " His voice had that same sweet and bouncy undertones that King Candy often spoke with, but compared to the thick black and orange around his eyes and his white make-up, and teeth as sharp as Smeek's or Mister Umlaut's, or anyone else's here it was rather…odd. "Would you be so kind, _dearie?_ "

"Eep, oh, I'm s-s-sorry, but I need that, mister." Jubileena took a good few five paces back, and shakily took off her hat. "But you can have this instead, if you like." She held it out by the very very edge of it.

" _OoOh,_ what a lovely SPECIMEN~♥ " He took the hat with a very gracious bow, before some sort of static noise came out of some speakers all around the tent, the music cutting out.

"Dr Klot, come up top, please." Umlaut's voice spoke, something less than nice hidden beneath his usual cheeriness. "King Candy needs treating, I think." There was a soft chime like one of the bells on his hat.

"Ouch!"

"Yeah, come on up." The speaker fell silent again, the music returning though at a much faster tempo. A small cage came down from the top of the tent on a rope, and Dr Klot stepped in, Jubileena's hat in tow.

"King Candy's up there! We need to go save him!"

Small as they were, even Minty's amazing jumping ability couldn't let them latch onto the cage, and Candlehead instead suggested that they use the tightropes to get closer to the top.

Reaching the third ring, they met six strange creatures Candlehead knew as the Broodles, apparently they were something called dogs, like Devil Dogs, and about the same size, but with actual heads and tails. In between doing backflips and jumping through hoops they snarled and chased after them whenever they could, drooling a little and staining their lovely baby blue frills when snapping their teeth.

The book only said the ringmaster owned three dogs, but how could she argue with what was chasing them, even though they'd split up around the ring? Three of them didn't seem to care that much, carrying on with their routine, but the other three gave chase no matter what.

Minty Zaki didn't look where she was running, smashed into a giant ball the Broodles would balance on, and fell on the floor in a heap.

Candlehead stepped between her and the dog.

"Huh, Candlehead? Why are you-?"

"Leave Minty alone, please, Broodle. We don't mean to bother you; we just need to climb up somewhere." It only barked even more, turning its attention to _her_ instead, and leaping straight for her. . .

But before she could even flinch it passed straight through, landing on the floor without making a sound, it flickering a little. Six Broodles, but the book said there were only three. . .

_Some of them aren't really there_

That was it! The dogs performing were the real ones; the others were just to keep people away!

Though they didn't seem to understand why she was so calm around the Broodles now, it was Candlehead's turn to do the dragging for once, happening upon a cannon.

"This can fire us up to the tightropes, but I'll need to stay behind and light it."

"No, I'll stay instead, I can jump better. I can get up there my own way and catch up."

"But—Minty, but it's dangerous-" Before she could protest anymore Minty had taken her hat, shoved her and Jubileena into the cannon, and they had landed firmly on the tightrope's starting point.

They could see the cage from here, teasing them a little just at the other side, already open, though the tightrope itself was filled with Mames and one or two Mister Ozobs balancing very precariously indeed.

Candlehead wasn't worried.

_All the Mames are back performing, and there's only one Mister Ozob._

Not actually very practiced in balancing, the now both hatless duo settled for just shimmying along the tightrope, passing through anything else that was balancing on it, and Jubileena said how clever it was to actually read the programme instead of always panicking like she did.

"Wonder where Minty is. We have to wait for her-"

" _Dejair,_ _porfavor_ _,chiquita!"_ It was one of those furry things, flying around very erratically. And there was Minty Zaki on its back, covering up its eyes with one hand and directing it with its ears with the other.

Minty had been leaping for every one of the creatures she could find until she grabbed the real one!

"Told you I would find another way up here." Jumping off and letting the thing go on its way, Minty landed safely in front of the cage. "I was wrong to leave 'Beezle and Snowanna back then, but I can't use that as an excuse for abandoning people now. We need to go save King Candy together. I'll stick with you guys, with you, Jubileena, and you, Candle—no, I mean _Minty._ "Candlehead couldn't stop her gasp at someone calling her Minty, using her actual, proper name. It didn't even sound right after so long. "You protected me after everything I've said to you, I need to be selfless like that, by helping you guys now." Minty took Candlehead's hat off, handing it back with a very sincere smile.

Being what felt like proper friends for the first time, the trio who had survived the other three attractions and everything in them stepped into the cage. They clutched tight onto each other's hands in a huddle as the cage pulled them upwards, even further above the Big Top, up to the airship and whatever lay in store for them inside it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The return of the people that got away. In the game you need to complete all three levels before you can go to the Big Top, so that's why I brought together one person from each level so they could go there.
> 
> Hehe, Smeek won't bother going near Minty since he remembers that Torvald and them trampled all over him before when he was at the Shooting Gallery.
> 
> Dr Klot is camp as all hell. You never know when you watch playthroughs, but once when I was playing I actually heard some of his lines. Man, he has a voice camper than even King Candy has :O It's hard to convey an effeminate voice though in text, so I had to cheap out an use the ~ symbol.
> 
> I used the whole some enemes not being 'real' to explain how some enemies that are only one person appear multiple times, also in the game if you take too much time when fighting an enemy right in front of you you do go straight through some enemies. I assume that the real one has some control over what the others are doing, but I'll explain stuff a little later.


	9. Dr Klot Comes to Call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vanellope and Swizzle/Sticky's sections of this chapter take place at different times during King Candy's part, so, say, if KC's section ran from 3:00-4:30 in the morning (that's probably what time we're at right now in this fic, considering the party started at midnight), Vanellope's would be at 4:20, and Swizzle's at 4:30, even though they're in the chapter before KC's part. Sorry that it's a little confusing.

"Not sure really. The party'll be over soon, so we might just hang around the Station, then head back. If we're right and the intro isn't ready we'll need to get everything set up pretty quick so no one notices." Jacob and Lisa had finished their ice-cream now, and he wiped a few spots of it from his visor with his teenager-y grin. He looked ready to order another ton of food, had Swizzle and Sticky not been leaving themselves.

"We're going home in a minute, so why don't you come and have a look at _Sugar Rush_ first? Everyone else has been to your game, so it seems fair, right?"

"Really? Wow, that'd be awesome! Yeah, we'd love to!"

* * *

It was amazing! The air in her face as she pushed her kart _just enough,_ then rushing down the rainbow taffy slope with whooshes, and dust kicking up from her wheels, just like racing for real!

The Time Trial Timer clocked over three hours, only displaying twenty minutes now, having over-clocked and started again. Now Vanellope was in the Nougat Mines, so close and yet she didn't really want it _to_ end. The time didn't matter, who cared if she got on the scoreboard or not, she was happy with just this, for however long it lasted. But still, going so fast was just so much fun, and it that meant it had to be over soon then that was fine too.

She'd be at the finish line in no time at all.

* * *

" _KJF_? What'th that?" King Candy asked, and then proceeded to knock back the rest of his wine. Sour Bill, having never had wine before, was still only taking very small sips every so often

Umlaut, though clearly very fond of the wine they'd been saving up, decided upon drinking it all wrong. Whether he once had a body before was irrelevant, he knew how to hold a wine glass in the _correct_ fashion, one strip of his collar wrapped around the stem, very clearly able to drink it properly if he wanted to, but choosing to use a crazy straw curled into the shape of an 'M' in a circle instead.

He briefly heard something about the Skeletons up top bringing down another bottle, and only saw a flash of white attached to said bottle as it appeared, before the cork was being pulled out by Umlaut's teeth, and his glass refilled again. Good.

From the cameras, the quartet had all managed to make it through the Chamber of Horrors without getting horribly mutilated like its residents, which considering how much Candlehead had been stumbling around in her usual unconcerned way, it was a miracle she hadn't ran straight into an Iron Maiden. Tort had popped up again, showing that his back was just as messed up as his front, but he was far less terrified than he thought he'd be at realising that. The wine helped a tad, ok, a lot. At least he'd got to drink _something_ tonight, even if it wasn't from Tapper's, it was similar enough.

Now, they'd wound up inside some giant compound occupied by an equally giant teddy bear, and had taken to living inside a dollhouse to keep out of his way. Not Candlehead though, she'd gone walk about again. While Ludwig had been going on about something or other, where the bear and his Pet Project Junior were going to help him take over the whole world one day, as far as the game and its 'plot' was concerned, what had caught his attention was the strange toy train travelling along on its track around the place, with the 'KJF' printed on its side.

"That's the _Kuschel Junior Frachtzug_ ," King Candy almost spit his wine out at the sound. Sure, Umlaut must have been German since that's where he'd been found, and by extension must have spoke it once upon a time, but hearing the words coming out of his pointy mouth in that randomly occurring accent that had never been there before just sounded weird, and his weird _voice_ was bad enough. "or the Kuddly Junior Freight. See, it works in both languages!"

"Cuddly is with a 'C'." Sour Bill drawled, though not from the wine, of course not, he was just being Sour Bill. King Candy doubted even alcohol would soften his dourness, no matter now much he drank.

"…Still, it works, doesn't it? I don't hear our dear _Mortal_ K _ombat_ complaining!" _Mortal Kombat_? They knew about that already? The guys from that game weren't the type to go exploring the minute a new game got plugged in, so that must have meant they knew about them naturally- they must've shared a company, Midway, was it? Well, that explained the 'M' symbol, explained their penchant for blood, too (though _Tapper_ was nothing like that, obviously! Clearly _Back Then_ saner people were employed there compared to now).

"Why did you make the train with your face on it?" As if Umlaut needed much of an excuse to stick his face anywhere, on token monocles, on decorations at the Freak show, and even this chair he was sitting on right now!

"That isn't me, we look nothing alike! Horrible, maroon and yellow on its hat, that doesn't go at all!" How was he supposed to know the colour the train was, if the camera only showed black and white? Though, having a closer look, the darker grey was on the wrong side compared to Umlaut's hat. "Besides, it's just a train, it isn't anything important. Oh hey, you dropped your shoe. Your foot that bad, huh?"

Umlaut drifted low enough to pick the shoe up between his teeth, its red gumdrop jingling as it shook.

"Hhm? Durs'a bwlll nsde iht?" He shook the shoe a few more times for good measure, grinning even more then he usually did at the sound, though not biting down hard enough for his teeth to tear right through it and flipped it over so it landed neatly between the other two sides of his hat. "Ah, just like the old days. No jesters these days wear the three-part hat. How're supposed to look like a donkey with only two?!" The two sides of his hat moved it into place better, careful not to let it fall off. "Oh well, it'll take a little while for Candlehead to get anywhere from the Freak Show. Wake me up when something happens." Pulling down the blue-print board on the wall so that it spun into its side and clicked that way, he plonked himself onto a silk purple pillow that had been stuck to it, embroidered at the front in gold thread with an 'Ü'. Apt, if nothing else. Just after setting his glass down and its straw beside him, he fell flat asleep, the sparkles that would have been pouring from beneath him appearing as dully ringing Zs above his head, lined with a pale blue.

The main screen swapped angles for a while longer, most areas of the carnival desolate now, until it arrived on a particularly high camera angle, where Candlehead, Jubileena and Minty Zaki where huddled together in front of the Big Top.

"Minty and Jubileena, where have they been?"

"Miss Bing-Bing was at ze Haunted House," It must've been before Marie came back if she'd managed to escape from there, but why would she leave Rancis and Crumbelina there? Unless they'd arrived there later on. "and Fräulein Minty Zaki left behind her friends in Rickety Town. Fräulein Rainbeau and Fräulein…Vinterpop, I believe? Krampus captured zem. There vas anozer. . .but I do not know vhat happened to her."

At the very mention of Rickety Town, before King Candy could come to terms with loss of another _two_ of his subjects, the top screen and speaker fizzled again; though only sound poured through, a lot less clear than before.

" _BE QUIET GUYS I NEED TO GET THROUGH- WE DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME, BOSS! IT'S ON FIRE! DON'T KNOW HOW IT GOT ON FIRE IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN BURITTO, BUT WE'RE TRAPPED UP HERE! HELP! OH, OH GOD IT'S GONNA FAL_ -BBBZZZTTT _"_ There was a lot of screaming, scraps of similar voices shouting at Rick, and static crackling after that, and the sound feed seemed to disconnect itself after a moment. King Candy hoped his crown was ok.

For the sake of double checking Ludwig turned one of the screens to a camera in Rickety Town. Sure enough, the wheel had come loose from its legs and knocked the Paul Bunyan Statue over, which in turn, or maybe both, he couldn't tell, had smashed into the Slay Ride. All the noise seemed to wake Umlaut up, and he cracked a purple lidded eye open enough to scoff again.

"Setting fire to the Big Bunyan Ride? Tsk, now that's just childish. Rick can't help trying to be the centre of attention, can he? Well, we can repair all the damage later, or rather, he and the others can, right, Boss?"

"Indeed."

"Can never get a nice sleep with people like Rick ruining things. It's ok, I guess; I can sleep when I'm dead— _oh wait_!" Having a nice long laugh to himself, and retaking his spot in the air, Umlaut produced a token out of nowhere. It looked exactly like the souvenir ones they'd got before, but he started scratching at it with one of the sharp insides of his bells, peeling the side away, revealing something brown before he took a far too casual bite out of it. He caught him looking.

"Oh, heh, it's a chocolate token coin. Tort 'n' Rodz're learnin' to make 'em, in time for our _Krampus Nacht_ party in December, because jelly is less chocolately like that." When he kept giving him that look he fidgeted a little, each of the points on his collar flicking silently. ". . .Do you want one?"

King Candy just rolled his eyes and drank more wine.

They focused on the trio at the Big Top again. It was a strange thought, to be right above them as they went about their cautious exploring together, and they had no idea he was here. The fire in Rickety Town must have scared them, what other reason would they willingly come into a place like this?

The camera flicked to the centre ring, with something that looked more like a makeshift hospital room than somewhere to perform. For some reason the picture had frozen, but some sound still filtered through now and again.

" _Oh,_ dearie _, we need your_ _brain_ _, for the simply_ darling _Ape over there~_ _._ _Would you be so kind,_ dearie _?"_

" _Eep, oh, I'm s-s-sorry, but I need that, mister."_ That sounded like Jubileena.

"OoOh _,_ _what a lovely SPECIMEN~!"_ The sound stopped completely after that. Not the best sign.

Umlaut pressed down the microphone button with one bell and pressed another button with the other, that sent the cage down. "Dr Klot, come up top, please. King Candy needs treating, I think."

For a second he floated back a little, hitting him right on his bad foot with one of his bells!

"Ouch!"

"Yeah, come on up."

He needed to think, to ignore all of – _this_ —and focus on what really mattered. If this Doctor really want Jubileena's brain how could she possible fight against him, what chance did anyone else have? Adorabeezle, Snowanna, Gloyd, Rancis, Crumbelina, and now probably Jubileena too. Even if five of those had been on Monday's roster it didn't even matter anymore, all that mattered was that there'd be enough left for the to _be_ a roaster, if his foot had even recovered by then.

He needed eight, eight plus him and then maybe everything could work out after all. Let's see, Swizzle and Sticky were safe elsewhere. The last time he'd seen Nougetsia and Torvald and Citrusella they were in one piece, but there was no guarantee Junior wouldn't throw a tantrum when he woke up, and Minty and Candlehead were right here. Even if everyone stayed safe until then. . . that was. . .

"Oh, that's only _theven_!" Maybe Taffyta was alive somewhere? With the whole of Rickety Town pretty much demolished in the fire it wasn't much of a hope, but she could have gotten out, right? She'd have run away, she was a smart girl. But still, how could he stay so positive on just a hope like that. "If I don't find Taffyta, S _thugar Rush'll_ get uplugged for thure!"

"Aww, well, that's ok, you can stay with us! You even have four fingers like—not like Smeek, those're just his gloves, but um, like the Tinsels, and Meurtito! You'll fit right in, even after that party. It's all fine!"

"No, no it'sth _not_ fine! You're going to get my game unplugged, and for what? Justht becauthe you're too, too— _stubborn_ to your code to do anything elthe?! Just becausthe Candlehead did what your attract mode voice over told her to do? _No,_ Thith isn't a party, and it isn't fun, or _fine_! _Nothing_ about this is—is—this isn't at all Turbo-tastic!"

Oh wait-! How could he say that?! He clamped one hand over his mouth, but kept the other tightly clutching his glass. He'd seen that musket of Tökkentäkker's hidden in the corner; he didn't need to provoke him into using it by breaking one of his wine glasses.

Sour Bill gave him a strange look, half confused and half bewildered, whereas the other two weren't sure what to make of his outburst, and hopefully not just _that part!_

"Eh? What's that, some sort of- _phrase_ you people from this arcade have? No offence, but I don't think it'll catch on here. And _calm down_ , you're like, a constant downer. You need to relax!" Umlaut gave him two pats on the head with a bell. "The Doctor'll be on his way soon, so stop worrying about things."

"The DOKTOR iz in~!" Dr Klot stepped out of the cage, clothed in turquoise scrubs and caked in make-up, much like a clown doctor would be. He was wearing Jubileena's hat, no guessed for how he'd ended up with that.

"I hope you're properly qualified!" It was all he could say without having to worry about Jubileena, might as well keep him distracted here so Candlehead and Jubileena could escape.

"Yup, he is- greatest painter at Leipzig University back in 1881!" It wasn't sarcasm there, but there was something…off, about how Umlaut spoke about him. "You couldn't get PHDs in art back then, but he's a doctor to us. He paints all our artwork, posters and things."

" _No,_ Umlaut _._ I'm a real _Doctor! I'm_ the one who made Flap-Jack, and Nik-Nak, do _not_ forget that~"

"Oh, don't boast, _Herr Kichertz-Klotz_!" Dr Klot flinched a little at the name. Maybe it was his name from that 'Before' they were always talking about. "You should be happy we even let you pretend to be a doctor for us. If not for me no one would even be here right now!" Umlaut waved his collar around, producing more sparkles, alluding to his magic and the deal he'd made. "You are only here to treat our lovely guest, King Candy, now, so get on that, _Marko_."

Dr Klot knelt down beside him, swiveling the chair sideways to get a better look at him.

"Hmph, I'd rather have you decorating my Fungeon, than trying to treat me, when you're not a real doctor."

"You can trusht me, Sire~!" For a few minutes Dr Klot looked over his foot as best he could without moving it. King Candy could see Candlehead protecting Minty Zaki from some dogs in the screen, but they went straight through her, just like that dinosaur had when he tried stopping it from eating his kart. It was a shame, even with his lack of kart aside, he might never get to race again.

"Oh, my!"

"What? Ith it not going to heal?"

"No~! Your foot isn't broken at all, Sire~. You just think it's broken because you're stressed out, so that's why it feels wrong, I guess~." Stressed yes, and for plenty of good reasons _besides_ the broken foot! That didn't mean he was imagining it! King Candy probably would have argued against such a stupid diagnosis, but Umlaut started fiddling around with the buttons at the front again.

"Hm, someone's using the lift. Wonder who it is. Well, we'd better find out."

Who could it be? Candlehead, Minty Zaki? Why would they follow the doctor here? King Candy watched the gap where the cage would appear. He needed to act, to wait for the exact moment that they got here, and make them get right back out, and maybe even get out of here with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The KJF actually stands for one of the names of an executive producer on the game- Kenneth J. Fedesna, but I didn't know that until very recently, so I made up a different acronym for it in-universe.
> 
> Yeah, Dr Klot and Umlaut aren't the best of friends. In the game there is a very crude blackboard drawing by Dr Klot of Umlaut, which says underneath it 'UMLAUT IS A KISS ASS!' (it also has a loveheart in the corner saying 'Dr. K +' but I can't read what the rest of it says). I like to think it was because Dr Klot and Ludwig knew each other before the contract was drawn up, so Umlaut drove them apart somewhat, and Dr Klot is jealous of how much bffs Umlaut is with him instead. The Kichertz part of his name comes from the fact that very early in writing this fic I wrongly thought his character name was Dr Giggles, and Kichertz means giggle in German, and is a proper surname I think, so I decided to just make his name double barreled when I found out his real name in the game's audits.
> 
> Last chapter next time guys, I can do this!


	10. Worst Halloween Ever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tiny epilogue, chapter. . .thing, you know. Time for bed.

The cage arrived, and King Candy could see those inside it, Minty, Candlehead and even Jubileena it seemed, all squashed together and too afraid to move. Candlehead looked like she was squinting, trying to see the four of them equally as squished in this room. The other two were just trying to figure out what was better to do next, and for the moment the awkward silence and tension just hung very precariously in the space, and for the sake of not daring to shatter it King Candy kept quiet.

Of course it would be Candlehead that stepped out first, pointing.

"Aha! There you are Mister Umlaut! Oh, and um—" She stumbled with Tökkentäkker's name and settled on blurting out instead. "-Happy Birthday!" And just like that all the tension dropped out the air faster than a duck from _Duck Hunt._ Minty and Jubileenaraised their eyebrows at her, but didn't say anything.

Umlaut perked up considerably, floating over to them.

"Aww, Candlehead, I knew you could do it right from that start!" He shook her hand using on of his collar bells, even through talking. "You didn't disappoint, using your hat to light the cannon. Very clever."

"Thank you, but my friends helped a lot too!"

"Congrats, all three of you, you finally made it! What was it- five hours, give or take? Good time for a first go."

_What's going on?_

He must've missed something, what? What had happened to what he imagined happening? He'd been preparing for the _two_ of the remaining racers showing up, and him warning them to leave and never come back, and now Umlaut was there almost giving them hugs. Even before he could open his mouth Sour Bill gave something of an equally confused shrug, he could probably see it in his expression.

At least Minty and Jubileena looked just as bewildered, but Umlaut just sparkled some more and gave them pats on the head.

"Calm down, you two, it's over now. All amazing things must come to an end, for now at least."

And he floated back to the microphone.

"Attention everyone: The Party's over." The sound echoed as if it was being sent all around the carnival. "Candlehead, Jubileena and Minty won. Let's all meet back up in front of Rickety Town as soon as you can."

"Now wasn't that fun, your Highness? Did you think those three'd get here first? . . .Hey, you don't look so good, did you want someone else to win?" This made no sense, not one speck of sense.

"But. . .Candlehead, sthe put the token in the grave when you told her not to. . ."

"Needing actual coins to be able to even start our own game and open up all our attractions? That'd just be dumb."

"But—b-b-but the Quarter Alert. . ." He caught the tiny twitch upwards in his grin, _oh._ "You lied. . .? You were jutht pretending?!"

"Lying is such a harsh word—but of course we were! How could you ever think any different? We heard what that Sonic said about dying in different games. If we had _really_ wanted to kill any of you, we would have done it ages ago. In a Quarter Alert Marie would live at the Haunted House, if you caught you why would she bring you here? What would be the point when she has an axe?"

It kinda made sense, he had been way too lucky here; Marie could have just killed him where he lay on the floor with his apparently _not broken_ foot those hours before if she really wished to, had she not, of course, only been pretending. But what was the point? It was all way too elaborate.

"Then why would you invite us here jutht to pretend you were trying to kill uth?"

"We needed to check to see if we were prepared in time for our first Quarter Alert tomorrow." King Candy could hear Minty and Jubileena chattering between themselves about if that meant everyone was ok.

"It'th Sthunday tomorrow!"

". . .Oh." Umlaut looked away with little spots of pink rising in his body cheeks, as if the possibility of the arcade being closed tomorrow hadn't factored into his plans at all. "Well, it still helps to be ready; we needed to be the very best we could for the gamers. So that's where you came in, we needed some people to see if everything was scary enough, but we couldn't let you know that, obviously, so it was our 'party' instead. We needed you to think we were behaving properly to make sure you thought it was believable."

"What you did was trick uth, and make uth think everyone wath getting themthelveth killed left and right. You've terrified my poor racers for hourth!" The laughing and whooping coming from the cage where the two of them were so relieved it wasn't real did not help him trying to support the whole 'probably traumatised' thing.

"But did your racers _not_ have fun? Ain't that the spirit of Halloween? To be scared even though things can work out ok in the end?"

"Flying on top of that guy—Muertito, was so awesome! I hope I didn't hurt the little guy any, I was really scared of falling off though, at the time!"

The walk down across the floor of the Big Top felt strange, walking at all felt strange when Umlaut had taken his makeshift splint off and given him his shoe back, and still he didn't want to believe it. There was a tiny limp in his gait, but it was fine.

On the way back the girls had received their prizes for winning: a free one of everything from the little blanc clown Smeek's food stand: hot dogs, popcorn, pretzels, peanuts, soda pops, cotton candy, all inside a nice bag that definitely wasn't one of their welcome bags again. Dr Klot had returned Jubileena's hat, and gone back to his blackboard to draw some more while muttering to himself.

"We got her! Watch out, she really does bite!" and now, with most of them gathered in front of what was left of Rickety Town, there certainly was a sight for sore eyes.

Rick was looking a lot worse for wear, even for a zombie teenager, all his clothes ripped and burnt in some places, and dangling from his hand by her collar, was Taffyta Muttonfudge. "You little mini-tinsel, good thing we were told not to kill ya, even though you almost ruined _everything_!"

"You ruined my make-up, and my hair, and that's way worse! I hate teenagers!" Squirming out of his hand, she made a beeline to him, all the other guilloteens moving right out of the way wherever she went.

That blue dinosaur, just the one now, which Candlehead told him was called Carnie, was huddled close beside that mechanic that never stopped smiling. They must have escaped when nearly everything there broke.

"It theemth like you kept yourself buthy, Taffyta." She wiped her eyes to try and clean up the black streams of her mascara, and smoothed out her hair.

"Chasing them around until they made the big wheel thingy fall over was fun, King Candy, but racing is way better!"

Even though most of the front of Rickety Town was pretty much demolished, out from the front gate of it someone in blue that looked like Santa on ice-skates, if Santa had antlers and giant claws, stomped out. A group of those elves were cheerily following him, and swinging happily from his antlers were Adorabeezle and Snowanna, wearing ice skates too. Jubileena almost knocked the two of them over she dived after them so hard, and Minty Zaki following after to apologise.

"Ice Skating with Krampus was amazing, I wish you could have stayed with us, Minty, but I know you must've been terrified since you didn't know what was in there. Krampus says we can keep the skates though, so we can try it back home some time!"

Tort and Rodz escorted Nougetsia, Torvald and Citrusella back from the Freak Show, though instead off all their trappings of being terribly mutilated, they were completely unhurt, a black bowtie in place of Tort's horrible spiked collar from before.

"Please don't worry about your kart, King Candy." When had Umlaut sneaked up on him like that!

"Hm, why thhouldn't I? Your dinosaur masthcot ate it."

"Felix'll probably be here later, he can fix it for you." Felix? Felix wasn't the type to want to come to a game anything like this!

"You know Felix?"

"Yeah, he brought us a welcome pie before! Well, um, Felix was worried that the Slay Ride being a little broken would be dangerous, so he said he'd come and have a look at it later tonight. He probably wouldn't have been able to fix it since it's programmed to be broken in some places, but he can fix your kart definitely. Though, looking at Rickety Town now. . . it sure could do with some fixing. Your little Taffy racer has quite a temper, but I'm sure that Rick and the others deserved it! Speaking of which, Rick, go find King Candy's kart and bring it out here. We'll bring it right back to you tomorrow morning, we promise."

Rick stepped around Taffyta as she went padding away, his arms folded and King Candy's crown balanced slanted on his black strings of what could be hair.

"Guess you'll be wanting this back, huh? Being king ain't so great if it makes little Tinsels scream and shout and dive on you and break everything just because you throw them in one little drum of water. It's a pretty cool crown though, mister king, y'should take better care of it." With as much precision as swiftness as he had done it the first time, he swiped his hat off King Candy's head, replacing it with his crown before he could even notice, and then heading back into Rickety Town. "This had better be easy to see. C'mon, Burrito, Piz, Legz, we're kart hunting."

"Y'know, Rick, I don't think you have much of a right to call us our nicknames anymore, why can't you call us Barry and Nancy and Linda instead? You did almost break everything in 'your' town."

"Messed up and broken, It's still my 'bat'-less town!" Rick called back to them as he went, them following, though just barely.

There were some people coming across from the Haunted House. Five of them, actually.

Gloyd was talking nonstop, and knowing Gloyd that had been going from the moment he'd got himself 'killed' for being too Halloween savvy for his own good. He was carrying a pumpkin with a face carved into it, and that lumbering thing in dungarees walked alongside him ("That's Hambone, King Candy", Candlehead was there to say, before she wandered off and talked to the Good-But-Useless Good Guy called Betty to get her autograph). He didn't even notice King Candy in the least, instead rushing after Jubileena to show he was ok, and to show off the 'epically amazing' Jack-O-Lantern Hambone had taught him to make.

"Is she not beautiful now, Monsieur Fluggerbutter?" Marie floated along with far more grace than before, as if she actually knew where she was going now. It was obvious she was talking about Crumbelina, pottering next to her, dolled up to the nines in her silvery dress made up of spider webs, covered in Marie's makeup and white powder all over her hair. Though Rancis was complaining about how it had ruined her already perfect fashion sense, King Candy could tell it was just an excuse that he thought she was pretty enough without all that excessive makeup like Taffyta had. It seemed all of Rancis's protesting over the speakers had left Marie with no interest in giving him a make-over, though the two squiggles above his lip made it seem she had got bored and drawn on him with whatever she'd used to dab on her own beauty spot under her mouth.

As she slowed and bent at the waist to speak to him he could see her eyes properly, like, _real_ eyes, no wonder she could see better now, now that she'd taken whatever milky white filter she'd be using out!

"Chef Zombie tells me his friends tried to save you from falling off the roof, Petit Roi. At least you seem ok now." Without waiting for him to maybe argue against the belief that the zombies would try to help him she ushered Crumbelina and Rancis towards the others.

Maybe she was right, maybe coming here wasn't. . . _that_ bad, and getting deceived like that. They were just Bad Guys, what did they know about how to properly behave, especially being so new? It was their job to such crazy, nonsensical things like this just for the sake of it, as much as it was to lure stupid teenagers like Betty to it in the first place, he supposed. Everything was still normal, at least. On Monday everything could still continue as it had for the last year. And his subjects _had_ got the party they asked for.

It was just as King Candy might have been thinking better of the game and its whims, that Sour Bill motioned towards the carnival's gate, which was slightly ajar now, and just past the Shooting Gallery a small group was coming towards them.

It was Swizzle, Sticky, and those two teenager's who looked like they'd been on a mission to sneak into Tapper's before. They were clutching lollipops and marsh mallows and whatever else from _Sugar Rush_ it looked like they could get their hands on. They just sheepishly grinned at him, before scurrying away, shouting after Betty and saying something about how it was sunny.

"Hello Thwizzle, Thticky. What bringth you here?"

"Well, we were gonna go straight back home after ourparty, I hope you don't mind us letting Jacob and Lisa visit, but when we got there we saw the Glitch walking around, I think she was taking her Halloween costume somewhere. I thought we should let you know in case she was doing something bad."

Vanellope didn't know about Halloween, and she couldn't have overheard him talking to the other racers about their party earlier. Unless. . .

"What kind of Halloween costume?"

"It looked like she'd dressed up like…what would you call it, Sticky?"

"Hm, it wasn't a pixie like me, nope. It was like. . .a. . . .a princess?"

"Yeah, a princess!"

Nope, never mind, coming here _really was_ THAT bad!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, finally got this fic done and dusted. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, and I’m happy I got it finished in time, even if only barely. 
> 
> Speaking of Halloween and birthdays, it’s CarnEvil’s actual birthday too. The game came out in America 15 years ago today. Wow, I feel old.
> 
> Blanc is a clown term which refers to the clowns who perform in serious parts to be the victim of the jokes that the cheerier clown, the Auguste, makes, and generally wear white with the ruffles. They’re the traditional old style clown and that’s what Smeek is.
> 
> There’s a lot of hints that the Quarter Alert didn’t really happen, like Lisa mentioning that her gun doesn’t work, even though the letter to her and Jacob that Rancis and Gloyd got said they would work start working after the first Quarter Alert, the ‘oil/acid’ still just being water, and the zombies wearing hats, which wouldn’t have happened in a normal Quarter Alert. Also the hints that some people that had got killed hadn’t actually died, like Sour Bill and King Candy hearing Taffyta hiding in the oil barrel in chapter 2, and the whole of Taffyta’s rampage pretty much. 
> 
> The whole taffy puller-audit machine thing getting broken is a reference to the fact that the game has no music during the credits for some reason, even though some evidence suggests that it is coded to have some, hence, in this fic the machine that deals with all the technical stuff like the credits, the dip switches, the high scores, the audits and the music, gets damaged and the credits music gets damaged and can’t be used.
> 
> I will write and post the spinoff oneshot as soon as TheCreatorseye finishes the cover for it :3

**Author's Note:**

> As I have been really off writing recently, so I won't say how many chapters this might have (though you have an idea) or how often I'll be updating it (though it'll probably be every two weeks because I'm now very lazy), but I hope you guys like it for all its potential craziness.
> 
> Also, quick question for anyone who happens to review, should I have Vannelope in this fic, not actually leaving Sugar Rush of course, but should she be having her own adventure while that's going on? Let me know please.


End file.
